Empowering the World's Documentarians

Elise Coker

(she/her/hers)

Documentary Filmmaker

New York, New York US

Available for Freelance

About

Elise Coker is a documentary filmmaker, video journalist, and artist based in New York City. Elise takes a character-driven and anthropological approach to documentary video journalism, with a focus on exploring the narratives of communities and the power those narratives hold. She has produced award-winning projects for numerous media outlets including VICE, NBC News, Topic, Al Jazeera, PBS, and The New York Times. She is currently directing two documentary features. Elise graduated with a B.A. in Media Studies from Pomona College in California. In addition to video, Elise paints landscapes and writes science fiction.

Featured Work

Stallions of Palestine

For many Palestinians, Arabian horses are a living symbol of their culture’s resilience; as one breeder says, they are “art mixed with history.” In this documentary, a young Palestinian breeder named Abdel Naser Musleh and his family navigate the difficulties of raising these delicate animals in the West Bank—where access to vets and training facilities always seem to be a checkpoint away. Directed, filmed, and edited by Elise Coker.

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The Homemade Guns of Taiwan

No one is allowed to own guns in Taiwan, with one exception: Indigenous hunters. But there’s a catch. Each hunter must make their own gun by hand. This leads to hunters using DIY guns of varying quality, often sorely lacking in safety. Guns made in factories are strictly banned. Indigenous hunter Talum Suqluman was charged in 2013 with using an illegal gun to hunt protected animals. In 2021, his case went before Taiwan’s highest court in an attempt to resolve the conflict between the right of Indigenous peoples to practice their hunting culture, and Taiwan’s near-total ban on civilian firearms. Many Indigenous activists rallied around Talum’s case, surfacing centuries-old tensions between the Han Chinese majority and Indigenous communities of the island. Directed and filmed by Elise Coker.

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