Biography
Elisabeth P. Montgomery is a documentary film artist and producer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her film career began in Chicago, Illinois, where she attended the Chicago Film Workshop. She began producing a series of social advocacy documentaries, mostly related to her work life in Chicago's Lakeview, Ravenswood, and Woodlawn neighborhoods. In the 1980s, Montgomery developed the story and initial funding for Jane Addams and the Women of Hull-House (1986) starring Ellen Burstyn and produced by WTTW. Montgomery also wrote and produced Rites of Passage, a story about youth offenders in the Woodlawn community at 61st and Cottage Grove documenting the lives, families, schools, youth workers, police, and most importantly, the hopes and aspirations of these children. Rites, funded by the Chicago Sheriff's Association, focused on serious youth offenders and was screened at the Chicago Sheriff's Office.
Montgomery then made films in Colombia, South America, where she worked on cross-cultural Economic Development projects with the Humphries Institute at the University of Minnesota and the Fundación Social, an urban economic development group in Bogota. With ties to the University of Xavieriana, and Cenpro Television in Bogota, Montgomery wrote and directed Nuestro Modo De Ser (1987) (Our Way of Being). The film documents the lives of a community of older women that were once orphaned girls and trained as teachers and accountants under the guidance of Padre (Father) Campoamor, a Jesuit priest from the Spanish Mondragon Commune who came to Colombia in 1911. Campoamor started the first credit Union - the Caja Social de Ahorros - in Colombia, and the orphan woman ran the bank until the late 1970s. The story, produced by Cenpro TV, aired in on Colombian television.
That same year Montgomery produced, directed, and filmed Armero, Night of Ashes, an art/theatre documentary. She used a 16mm Bolex to document the survivors of one of Colombia's worst natural disasters - the volcanic explosion that wiped out the mountain city of Armero. Working with the United Nations and many other rescue groups from around the world, she documented the town's early renewal six months after the tragedy. The film premiered at the Chicago Latino Film Festival in 1987.
Montgomery led teen groups in Woodlawn to video-document their lives in a series called The Future Within funded by the Illinois Humanities and Arts Councils. She then produced Presente! For the Challenge of Literacy, a feature documentary for a state-wide community-based educational series supporting adult bilingual education and funded by the Secretary of the State of Illinois Pete Wilson. Montgomery worked in conjunction with five local Latino organizations to produce this authentic portrayal accompanied by educational materials; 1988.
In 1990, Montgomery moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked in the Tenderloin Community of San Francisco as a homeless youth and adult advocate for Hospitality House. She became active in the literary and arts community at that time. In 1999, Montgomery and architect husband Eugene Tsui, and family moved to Shenzhen, China. There, she worked as a cross-cultural trainer while completing her doctoral dissertation in Human Organizational Systems and Organizational Development. Employed by the Nanshan Education Bureau in Shenzhen, Montgomery produced several documentaries (2010-2017) as part of her InterLangua series. She collaborated filmmaker Melody C. Miller on the series, which focused on the internationalization of schools in China.
Montgomery joined forces with director/cinematographer Melody C. Miller and produced Ruth Weiss: the Beat Goddess (2019) a feature documentary about one of the last living significant poets of the Beat Generation. The film premiered at the Asolo Art & Film Festival, Italy, on ruth's 91st birthday. The film premiered at the Asolo Art & Film Festival. The poet ruth weiss recently won the prestigious Maverick Spirit Award at the 25th annual Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose.
