Ellen Schneider
Creator/Executive Producer
Interview - click here

Ellen Schneider is executive director of American Documentary, Inc., the company that produces the PBS series P.O.V. Contributing to the series in a range of capacities since 1989, she has been responsible for positioning and introducing non-mainstream work to public television audiences nationwide. For AmDoc/P.O.V. she created Talking Back: Video Letters to P.O.V., a camcorder viewer-response segment, and High Impact Television, which links programming, individuals, grassroots organizations and other media.

Schneider also developed the Television Race Initiative, in which diverse television broadcasts create a spine for community dialogue and problem solving around the issue of race relations. Six cities are currently piloting the effort.

Throughout the 1980s, Schneider worked on independently produced documentaries and dramas for public television, cable, and educational distribution. She worked briefly in Hollywood developing reality-based movies-of-the-week, and was a member of the start-up team for the Independent Television Service (ITVS).

Schneider has lectured on the implications and potential of subjective television at the Neiman Foundation at Harvard University, the Sundance Film Festival, Columbia University, the New School for Social Research, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and other institutions. She has served on panels and juries ranging from the Sundance Film Festival to the National Endowment for the Arts, the Council on Foundation’s Film Festival to the RioCine Festival in Brazil. Schneider holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Antioch College and lives with her husband and daughter in San Francisco.