Filmmaker George Ellzey Jr. ’15 Shares Career Insights with Students

Following the screening, Ellzey spoke about the inspiration for each project. His first film, Cottage Grove (2023), is a Chicago/Midwest Emmy-nominated short that depicts a young man and his stroke-afflicted father as they struggle to find common ground in a store parking lot.

"Cottage Grove is about the process of getting an apology from a parent, and the challenges of communication between fathers and sons," Ellzey said. "The story is loosely based on an experience with my own father, when I picked him up from the hospital and we sat in a Wallgreens parking lot. We didn't talk-we just listened to jazz music."

Accessories, the second film that Ellzey shared, is an eight-minute experimental short that he created in 2021. "Accessories is the product of my wrestling with the question of tokenism for Black and Brown people on television," he said. "I wanted something grungy, bombastic, and colorful that differed from my other films."

Ellzey's third film, Closed Mouths, follows a young man riddled with self-doubt about his success as an artist. "So many of us experience imposter syndrome, which makes us feel like we aren't accomplishing enough in comparison to our peers," he said. "I wanted to externalize that feeling."

The common thread that binds Ellzey's work, he shared, is to encourage meaningful dialogue. "The goal of my films is to foster conversations about mental health, specifically for Black men," he said. "My best work always comes from a personal place. I begin with a seed of my own experience, and then work to see how I can bring other people in."