Filmmaker, curator, strategic consultant, and producer Elena Park has moved freely through the worlds of arts, culture, and media throughout her colorful career. Her production and consulting company, Lumahai Productions, embraces opportunities for artistic collaboration and social change with artists, thinkers, and communities as well as institutions, large and small. Elena’s NationalSawdust+ series, which launched when the venue opened its doors in October 2015, explores timely issues and surprising artmaking with creators including Jad Abumrad, Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Ava DuVernay, Gandini Juggling, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Susie Ibarra, and esperanza spalding. NS+ currently investigates the interplay and collision between the natural and human worlds, featuring musicians, artists, writers, and activists working to preserve and restore the environment.

Elena earned her second regional Emmy directing nomination for the hour-long documentary, Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin, which also received a nomination for Outstanding Arts/Entertainment program. Screened multiple times on KQED (and available for streaming), the San Francisco Opera/Lumahai film has been described as ”a winning portrait… an absorbing and insightful documentary” by the San Francisco Chronicle. Prior SFO offerings include her award-winning In Song series (also available for streaming), tracing the roots of singers such as Jamie Barton (with Béla Fleck), J’Nai Bridges, Pene Pati, and Pretty Yende, who performed spirituals, Samoan, and Zulu songs on location in Auckland, Piet Retief, and more.

For the Onassis Foundation, Elena created Visual Cavafy, featuring the talents of artists including Taylor Mac, Julianne Moore, Carl Hancock Rux, and Caroline Shaw; the visual poems were screened at NYC’s New Museum as well as in Athens and Alexandria (and are available to stream on AllArts). Other directing/executive producer credits include In Focus (Cleveland Orchestra), led by Alan Gilbert and Jane Glover; Intonations (Cabrillo Festival); and Vân-Ánh Võ (Stanford Live); during covid-times, she also executive-produced Stanford filmings with Zakir Hussain, Garrick Ohlsson, and Kronos Quartet (including “The President Sang Amazing Grace” with Meklit, highlighted by Tom Friedman/The New York Times in his column just before the 2020 election).

For the Metropolitan Opera, she continues in her 15th season as Executive Producer of the Saturday radio broadcasts; she served as Supervising Producer of the Live in HD series, beamed live into 70 countries around the world, for its first 140 shows. While on the Met’s senior staff, she created public initiatives as well as press and marketing campaigns, including a new approach to branding and visual imagery.

Beyond NS+, Elena has curated, and often hosted, events for leading venues around the country, including Asia Society, Guggenheim Works + Process, Le Poisson Rouge, NYPL Live, the Met, the Met Museum, and the Kennedy Center, where she served as Artistic Consultant. For San Francisco Opera, recent public programs have showcased Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang (The Monkey King); Sister Helen Prejean and Jake Heggie with death penalty abolitionists (Dead Man Walking); and gun violence prevention activists and leaders, including Pastor Mike McBride, W. Kamau Bell, and representatives from GIFFORDS (Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence).

Elena has served as Strategic Advisor for Cambodian Living Arts, Meyer Sound, and SFO, as well as creative consultant for TV/film including Bel Canto and Mozart in the Jungle. Previously, she was WNYC Radio’s Executive Producer of Music & Culture (creating specials exploring seminal works of artists from Whitman to Wagner) and Editor-in-Chief of andante.com, and Director of Communications at BAM. For the San Francisco Chronicle, she has interviewed artists ranging from Yoko Ono to Philip Glass, Robert Lepage to Clive Owen. She is currently developing a film rooted in the Tibetan concept of Bardo, or “the in-between.”