Ellen Windemuth, CEO, Off the Fence (Netherlands)
Ellen Windemuth is the founder and owner of Off the Fence. After graduating from Brown University in the U.S., Ellen worked in sales and co-productions for leading international companies such as Fremantle and Atlantis before starting OTF in Amsterdam in 1994. She is on the board of the Wildscreen Trust, the Jackson Hole Film Festival and the Wild Talk festival in South Africa, and on the Steering Committee of the World Science Congress.
Ellen has developed and executive produced a large part of OTF’s factual television library and won many international awards through the years. She is very active in coproduction’s, which remain a vital part of the company’s activities.
Off the Fence creates and markets programming with a focus on quality, integrity and innovation. Off the Fence’s 8-person sales team covers all territories worldwide. As true non-fiction specialists, the entire team is very familiar with the production process and the company is proud of its close relationships with the filmmakers it represents. Our catalogue contains over 2500 hours of natural history, science, health, adventure, history and social documentaries. Besides being the exclusive distributor of NHNZ’s much awarded catalogue of over 325 hours, OTF was recently appointed to distribute the excellent HD catalogues from the award-winning US broadcaster Smithsonian Networks’, WEtv & Rainbow Media. OTF is known to represent some of the best independent factual producers in the world and in addition to this develops, finances and co-produces international non-fiction programmes. The company works hands-on with established production companies as well as talented newcomers to create internationally marketable specials and series.
OTF has a long track record of co-productions with broadcasters such as Discovery, NHK, Animal Planet, Arte, ZDF, BBC, NDR, France 5, BR and National Geographic. This has resulted in over 260 hours of co-produced and acquired programmes in the past four years.
In 2005, Off the Fence launched a UK production arm based in Bristol, followed by production and sales offices in Singapore and Cape Town in 2007. In the Fall of 2009 we are opening offices in Johannesburg, New York and Mainz.
