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Keynote Presentation

The Drama of History

Annual Meeting Keynote Address by Kirk Ellis
Thursday, November 5
9:00-10:30 am
New Mexico Museum of Art

Open to the general public and museum community; $5 for non-conference attendees

History is storytelling--yet the way it's taught in schools and presented in many museums has given history a bad rap. In this provocative presentation, Kirk Ellis shares insights from his many years as an historical dramatist and offers some suggestions on how to re-establish history's "street cred." It's not just facts and dates--it's about people. Real people. People like ourselves.

Award-winning, Santa Fe-based writer/producer Kirk Ellis is best know for his work on the HBO miniseries, “John Adams” starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney, for which he won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, a Writers Guild of America Award and the Humanitas Prize. Ellis wrote and co-executive produced the seven-part HBO miniseries, which is based on David McCullough’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography. Ellis will continue his association with McCullough and the American Revolution on his next project for HBO, “1776.” For the big screen, Ellis is working on the feature project “Blood and Thunder,” an epic drama of Kit Carson and the Navajo Wars, and "Escape," the true story of Carolyn Jessop, who escaped from a plural marriage in a fundamentalist Mormon compound under the leadership of Warren Jeffs.

At the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema and Television he became the first undergraduate to achieve degrees in both film production and history/criticism.  He began his professional career as a film critic for The Hollywood Reporter and in 1985, at the age of 24, was named the trade paper’s international editor – the youngest journalist to ever serve in the post.  In 1992 he was named Editor in Chief of the London based European trade magazine, Moving Pictures, and simultaneously formed Shadow Catcher Productions, an independent production banner under which Ellis develops his own indie features and documentaries.