LEE, the directorial feature from award-winning Cinematographer Ellen Kuras, portrays a pivotal decade in the life of American war correspondent and photographer, Lee Miller (Kate Winslet). Miller’s singular talent and unbridled tenacity resulted in some of the 20th century’s most indelible images of war, including an iconic photo of Miller herself, posing defiantly in Hitler’s private bathtub. Miller had a profound understanding and empathy for women and the voiceless victims of war. Her images display both the fragility and ferocity of the human experience. Above all, the film shows how Miller lived her life at full-throttle in pursuit of truth, for which she paid a huge personal price, forcing her to confront a traumatic and deeply buried secret from her childhood. Award-winning Cinematographer and director Ellen Kuras (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Shot Andy Warhol, The Betrayal) joins us for a conversation on working with Kate Winslet as Executive Producer and lead actor, the impact  of Lee Miller’s career on her life and the opportunity to put Miller’s work and personal courage on full display.

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About the filmmaker – Ellen Kuras, ASC is the first woman to join the elite ranks as the recipient of the ASC Lifetime Achievement Award Kuras’  cinematography in such films as Swoon, I Shot Andy Warhol (AC April ’96), Summer of Sam (AC June ’99), Blow (AC March ’01), Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (AC April ’02) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind(AC April ’04) sets her apart as a bold stylist with an uncanny ability to visualize characters’ emotional and psychological landscapes. Her commitment to nonfiction filmmaking, exemplified by her own Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated documentary, The Betrayal – Nerakhoon  (AC April ’08) — which she directed and shot — as well as 4 Little Girls  (AC Jan. ’98) and Pretend It’s a City, testifies to her anthropological curiosity and sense of artistic mission. Kuras’ nonfiction work, which includes Neil Young: Heart of Gold (AC March ‘06),  Berlin, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and David Byrne’s American Utopia, dates back to her first cinematography credit, the Student Academy Award-winning short   Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia, and continues today, even as she also focuses on directing. In the weeks before the ASC Awards ceremony, she was in the midst of producing and editing the globe-spanning Covid-19 documentary anthology Chronicle (AC Oct./Nov. ’20), as well as prepping her scripted-feature directing debut, the biographical period drama LEE, about photographer Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, a fashion model who became a war correspondent for Vogue during World War II.

About the subject – Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller, born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York was, as Winslet explains, “An unstoppable force of nature with a tremendous lust for life.” She became a model for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines before moving to Paris to study photography with Man Ray. She set up her own photographic studios in Paris and New York before relocating to Cairo. It was then a chance meeting with Roland Penrose that led her to move to London at the outbreak of WWII. Her surrealist images, along with her pack shots, portraits and extraordinary WWII photographs rightly earned her a key place in history as challenges and traveled to Europe to report for British Vogue from the frontline. one of the most fascinating figures of 20th Century photography. 

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Reviews:

“What follows is an illuminating portrait of a woman of conviction and the hurdles she clears to do the job she is born to do…” – Lisa Trifone, Third Coast Review

“For all its sentimentality in the quiet moments, Kuras’ film captures the dangers of being a war journalist and the importance of documenting history so as to provide indisputable evidence of unthinkable crimes.” – Nadira Begum, Paste Magazine

“Winslet is…a one woman argument for why what Lee Miller documented and how she documented it mattered in a movie that honors her memory, and the memories that haunted her to the end of her days.” – Roger Moore, Movie Nation

““Lee,” based on Antony Penrose’s biography of his mother, “The Lives of Lee Miller,” is an interesting look at an artist whose true importance, unfortunately, became apparent only many years after her death.” – G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle

“This is a penetrating biopic, and while it may take a familiar shape, the pioneering woman at the center was anything but traditional.” – Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service