Alice Elliott

A photo of Alice Elliott, an older woman with light skin and shoulder-length grey hair wearing a black tank top and scarf, smiling widely at the camera, sitting in front of a bookshelf.

Alice Elliott is an Academy Award-nominated documentary director of The Collector of Bedford Street, a short documentary that made its debut on Cinemax/HBO. The film tells the story of her neighbor, Larry Selman who had an intellectual disability that gave him a low IQ.  However, he committed his life to raising money for others, even though he lived at the poverty level.  His passion for community involvement and philanthropy was a model of service leadership. The International Kiwanis continues to use The Collector of Bedford Street to train young Key Leaders all around the world in service leadership.

She directed the PBS Award-winning documentary Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy, which is one of her short films that, through compelling stories, change our perceptions of ability.  The film is now being made into a musical.

A Guggenheim Fellow award recipient, Ms. Elliott also makes training films and branded content that use high-quality visuals and people with disabilities to tell their own stories.   As a media diversity and accessibility consultant, she develops programs for corporations, government agencies, and non-profits. 

She and Emmy Award winner Jason DaSilva are co-directing a feature film, The Dismantled, about an unlikely smuggler.

Recently she completed Miracle on 42nd Street, a documentary about affordable housing for artists that won a 2020 NY Emmy Award for Best Documentary. The film had its world premiere at DOC NYC and received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant.

Through her social media presence, she posts regularly on topical disability news and affordable housing for artists.  Currently, she is developing an app on the history of disability rights, and looking at empathy and disability through VR (Virtual Reality).

She heads the Documentary Studies Area and teaches documentary and television production at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

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