Ross McElwee

Ross McElwee Trailers

Remake TrailerPhotographic Memory TrailerBright Leaves Trailer

Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, and Harvard professor, known for his autobiographical films about his family and personal life, usually interwoven with an episodic journey of some sort. McElwee is a 1971 graduate of Brown University, and received his MS from MIT in 1977. He received the Career Award at the 2007 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

Most Popular Ross McElwee Trailers

Total trailers found: 18

Who Is Henry Jaglom? Trailer (1997)

08 July 1997

Hailed by some as a cinematic genius, a feminist voice and a true maverick of American cinema, dismissed by others as a voyeuristic fraud and the "world's worst director," Henry Jaglom obsessively confuses and abuses the line between life and art.

Six O'Clock News Trailer (1997)

20 January 1997

Filmmaker Ross McElwee trails characters whose stories have been fodder for television news and takes their tales of loss and longing further than the requisite sound bite.

Space Coast Trailer (1979)

10 March 1979

Focusing on three residents of Cape Canaveral, Florida this film puts forward the thesis that a decline in NASA's space program after the moon landings has left the local community impoverished.

Sweetgrass Trailer (2009)

18 November 2009

An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana's breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture, revealing a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.

Backyard Trailer (1984)

01 January 1984

Documentary film maker Ross McElwee returns to his family home in Charlotte NC. In filming his family, he captures a microcosm of Southern society.

68 Albany Street Trailer (1976)

01 January 1976

Early documentary short by Ross McElwee. 16mm; color; sound.

20,000 Missing Persons Trailer (1974)

01 January 1974

Early documentary short by Ross McElwee. 16mm; color; sound.

No Vladimir Trailer (2000)

01 January 2000

Vladimir is an impeccably dressed student who wants to become a spy. In pursuit of this goal he learns all he can about espionage, learning codes and leaving secret messages for his college roommate (the narrator).

Resident Exile Trailer (1981)

11 March 1981

This short film, made with my friends and filmmaking partners, Michel Negroponte and Alex Anthony, was commissioned by PBS's innovative TV Lab in 1980.

In Paraguay Trailer (2008)

01 September 2008

Documentary film by Ross McElwee about his family's process to adopt a Paraguayan infant girl named Mariah.

Sherman's March Trailer (1985)

13 November 1985

Ross McElwee sets out to make a documentary about the lingering effects of General Sherman's march of destruction through the South during the Civil War, but is continually sidetracked by women who come and go in his life, his recurring dreams of nuclear holocaust, and Burt Reynolds.

Time Indefinite Trailer (1993)

12 May 1993

After documentarian Ross McElwee gets married, a series of misfortunes follow: his grandmother dies, his wife miscarries, and then his father dies less than a week later.

Remake Trailer (2026)

10 July 2026

The death of his son causes McElwee, an autobiographical filmmaker, to look back on his life’s work.

Bright Leaves Trailer (2004)

28 April 2004

Ross McElwee travels through the North Carolina tobacco belt in search of the ancient southern traditions associated with tobacco growing and use, while comparing his filmmaking to commercial cinema, represented by Bright Leaf, a melodrama directed by Michael Curtiz in 1950, starring Gary Cooper, apparently based on the life of his great-grandfather.

Something to Do with the Wall Trailer (1991)

03 April 1991

In 1986, Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War lore.

N!ai, The Story of a !Kung Woman Trailer (1981)

03 May 1981

This film provides a broad overview of Ju/'hoan life, both past and present, and an intimate portrait of N!ai, a Ju/'hoan woman who in 1978 was in her mid-thirties.

Photographic Memory Trailer (2011)

04 September 2011

Distressed over his teenaged son's addiction to the Internet and fearful that the developing boy has grown detached from the real world, documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee takes a journey back into his own adolescence by returning to St.

Charleen or How Long Has This Been Going On? Trailer (1977)

01 January 1977

In Charleen, documentarian Ross McElwee looks at the life of a North Carolina poet and teacher who acts as a muse to a motley crew of artists and musicians.