Judy Dennis and Ellen Dennis

Last Login 07/09/11

• New York, NY
• Backed 4 projects
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JUDY DENNIS (Director) PATRIOTIC, Judy’s first short film as a director and screenwriter, screened at film festivals worldwide - most prestigiously, as part of New Directors/ New Films at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. “Luminous”, wrote Stephen Holden in The New York Times. For television, she directed “Sonata Da OZ,” an episode in the final season of HBO’s groundbreaking series OZ.
Judy enjoyed three decades as a casting director in the mainstream of American theater and film. Film directors with whom she worked ranged from Terrence Malick to Brian DePalma, Andrzej Wajda, Julie Taymor and Ang Lee. Casting locales ranged from Twyla Tharp’s New York City walk-up to mountain villages in Thailand. Judy was Alan J. Pakula’s assistant on SOPHIE’S CHOICE, and dialogue director on two films by Michael Cimino. She shared a special Emmy Award casting SEPARATE BUT EQUAL. Classical and contemporary theater repertories cast by Judy include hundreds of plays for theaters such as New York Shakespeare Festival, Classic Stage Company, Mark Taper Forum, Williamstown Theater Festival. In addition to a half dozen full-ensemble musicals, she assembled casts for the Bessie and Obie Award winning THE MYSTERIES AND WHAT’S SO FUNNY? and for PUNCH AND JUDY GET DIVORCED, a creation for Mikhail Baryshnikov expanded for the stage and broadcast on PBS Alive TV. She served as a consultant on MEMORY AND HOPE: a Permanent Installation at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage.
Judy is a graduate of Bennington College, and teaches at NYU’s Undergraduate School of Film and Television . She recently returned from Uganda as a mentor with Maisha, a filmmakers’ laboratory created by Mira Nair to provide professional training to emerging filmmakers from East Africa and South Asia.
ELLEN DENNIS (Producer) recently completed six seasons as the Producer of New York City Center's Fall for Dance festival. She was Producer of Orange County Performing Arts Center's Fall for Dance in California. Ellen has produced and managed works internationally for artists including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Peter Brook, Diamanda Galas, Philip Glass, Andre Gregory, Steve Reich, Wally Shawn, Twyla Tharp and Robert Wilson; and for American Ballet Theater, National Public Radio (Peabody Award winning HEAT) and the Wiener Festwochen (The Vienna Festival). She was Executive Producer of the New York production of Peter Brook’s TIERNO BOKAR. She has been a consultant to the Australia Arts Council, Columbia University and the Viennale (Vienna Film Festival).
Ellen was Assistant to the Executive Producer for dance-on-screen works including the WNET/BBC production of Twyla Tharp’s THE CATHERINE WHEEL and Emmy Award winning BARYSHNIKOV BY THARP. At the Brooklyn Academy of Music through the 80’s, she was Company Manager for productions including THE MAHABHARATA and EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH. Ellen co-produced PATRIOTIC, a film directed by Judy Dennis.
In Austria, Ellen created an arts program for unaccompanied minors at the Traiskirchen Refugee Camp, inspiring Vienna’s Impulstanz Festival and the Wiener Festwochen to inaugurate performing arts programs for asylum-seeking minors.

After many years of collaboration, Judy and Ellen formally join as Dennae Productions to produce performing arts projects worldwide.