DER Filmmaker

George C. Stoney

George C. Stoney is a veteran filmmmaker of over a hundred documentaries, a lifelong media activist and professor of film at New York University. A journalism student at the University of North Carolina, he worked as a photo intelligence officer in World War II and as an information officer for the Farm Security Administration. In 1946, Stoney joined the Southern Educational Film Service as writer and director and in 1953 started his own production company that made many documentary films on a multitude of subjects. All My Babies, one of his first efforts and a pioneering look at childbirth, received numerous accolades and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2002.

Stoney was the director of the Challenge for Change project, a socially active documentary production wing of the National Film Board of Canada from 1968-70 and is perhaps most famous as the "godfather of public access to cable television," a title he characteristically declines. Still, his advocacy for every citizen's right to use the new media for public expression helped create the federal legislation which now enables community media. Stoney believes "films should do, not just be."

Films Available at DER
Palmour Street (1949)
All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story (1952)
Hudson Shad (1974)
Planning for Floods (1974)
The Shepherd of the Night Flock (1975)
How The Myth Was Made (1978)
Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine (1978)
In China Family Planning is No Private Matter (1978)
Southern Voices: A Composer's Exploration with Sorrel Doris Hays (1985)
The Uprising of '34 (1995)
Race or Reason: The Bellport Dilemma (as producer) (2003)

Materials organized with collaboration of Mike Hazard, documentary filmmaker and archivist for George C. Stoney. For more, visit www.thecie.org.

Related Links
Stoney Page at IMDb
Stoney Filmography at Academic Film Archive of North America