In 1986 he published Dimitri Tiomkin: The Man and His Music in conjunction with the National Film theatre.
In 1977 he published World Filmography with Peter Cowie, and began authoring the annual Movie Guides for Variety from the 1990s.
He co-founded the Udine Far East Film Festival and was its artistic director for the first three editions, starting in 1999.
With his expertise in Asian cinema, Elley has been outspoken on several topics, and has been critical of misogyny in Tsai Ming-liang's films.
[4] Since 2015, he is publishing his new texts as well as re-publishing the old ones on his personal website, Sino-cinema, amassing a total of 1050 reviews of Chinese-language films as of 11 April 2020.