--- name: "Ellen Giffard" canonical: "https://film.one/person/ellen-giffard" roles: ["Director","Editor"] born: "9 March 1925" died: "16 February 2023" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 82 updated: "2026-09-17T04:47:39.763396+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Ellen Giffard Director and editor. Born 9 March 1925 in Meadville. Died 16 February 2023. ## Details - **Work:** Director, Editor - **Born:** 9 March 1925, Meadville - **Died:** 16 February 2023 - **Active:** 1970–1976 - **Also known as:** Ellen Hovde, Ellen Huxley - **Works often with:** Albert Maysles, David Maysles ## Fi1m on Ellen Giffard > An editor before she was a director, and an editor in everything she directed, Ellen Giffard shaped the Maysles brothers' raw footage into films that let people talk themselves into the open. *Grey Gardens* is the proof, and it holds. The row in *Grey Gardens* (1976) about who should have married whom goes on long after most films would have cut away. Both Beales talk at once, a record plays under them, a cat complains from somewhere off, and the cut does not sort it out for us. That is Ellen Giffard's work, with Muffie Meyer and Susan Froemke, and it is the clearest statement of what she did: hold the scene until the length itself is the point. We winced through that quarrel, and the wince turned into something closer to affection, because nobody was being caught out; both women knew the camera was there and talked anyway. She came to it as an editor. Her early credits, under the name Ellen Huxley, include *The Chair* (1963), a documentary following a death-row inmate, and by the end of the decade she was cutting for the Maysles brothers, most notably *Gimme Shelter* (1970), the film of the Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont, edited with Charlotte Zwerin. Co-directing followed: *Christo's Valley Curtain* (1974), a short on the artist's installation, made with the Maysles and Meyer, and then *Grey Gardens*, where she has the same two credits, director and editor, and the second is the one that matters. The Maysles shot; Giffard and Meyer decided what it meant. Of Big Edie she said she "didn't really want to do it at first", and you can feel that reluctance being handled carefully in the cutting. Her method was cinéma vérité in the strict sense: no narration, no interviews, a great deal of footage, and a story found in it afterwards rather than imposed on it going in. The charge against *Grey Gardens* for fifty years has been cruelty, that watching it makes the viewer an exploiter. We do not think so, and the reason is the editing. A cruel cut would trim the Beales to their oddest moments. Giffard's cut gives them their full sentences, their repetitions and their music, and lets them be as tiresome and as funny as they were. Nothing is added; everything you hear, the women put there. That is respect, of a plainer kind than admiration. The later years went to television: documentaries for PBS, episodes of *NOVA*, a *Benjamin Franklin* series in 2002. We have not reviewed them and will not pretend to a view. What we can say is that the two films that matter most here were shot by other people, and they matter because of what happened to the footage afterwards. If you want to see what an editor does, watch the row at Grey Gardens and count the places where you would have cut. She did not, and she was right. ## Biography Ellen Hovde, also credited as Ellen Giffard and Ellen Huxley, was an American documentarian, film editor, director and producer. She was born on 9 March 1925 in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and died on 16 February 2023 in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a degree in theatre from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1947 and studied at the University of Oslo. Hovde worked as a freelance editor from the 1950s and later collaborated extensively with the Maysles brothers. She edited *Gimme Shelter* (1970) and served as both editor and co-director, alongside Albert and David Maysles and Muffie Meyer, on *Grey Gardens* (1975). Hovde co-directed other documentaries including *Christo’s Valley Curtain* (1974) and directed episodes of series such as *NOVA*. She shared a Primetime Emmy Award for producing the 2002 PBS series *Benjamin Franklin*. She was married to Matthew Huxley and later to Adam Giffard. *Sources: imdb.com, en.wikipedia.org, nytimes.com.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *Grey Gardens* (1976), Fi1m 86, Director, Editor — [page](https://film.one/film/grey-gardens.md) - *Gimme Shelter* (1970), Fi1m 78, Editor — [page](https://film.one/film/gimme-shelter.md) ## Also known for - *NOVA* (1974), Director --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/ellen-giffard