Stoney, George C.

Educator.

George C. Stoney, film maker and professor of film at New York University, managed Helen Douglas Mankin's 1948 Congressional campaign.

George C. Stoney (1916- ), a documentary filmmaker who specialized in socially relevant films, was a mentor and teacher to generations of filmmakers and media activists worldwide and a pioneer in the movement for the creation and use of public access television to enact social change.

George Cashel Stoney was born in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1916. He studied journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and while still a student, wrote feature articles for the Raleigh News and Observer and the Greensboro Daily News . Upon graduation in 1937, Stoney set out traveling across the South and wrote a daily column for the News and Observer in which he recorded his observations of the region as it faced fundamental social change. He moved to New York, N.Y., in 1938, where he freelanced as a writer on the South, pursued graduate studies in social research methods at the Henry Street Settlement and at the New School for Social Research, and was associate editor of Survey Graphic magazine. In 1940, he went to work for Ralph Bunche as a field research assistant in the South on Gunnar Myrdal's study of American race relations ( An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy ). Stoney next worked as a publicist for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), trying to raise middle class support for sharecropper and tenant farmer programs in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Stoney's interest in photography began during this time period when he toured FSA photographers around the South.

During World War II, Stoney served as a photo intelligence officer for the 8th United States Army Air Forces in England, France, Belgium, and Germany. He met his future wife, Mary Newcomb Bruce (1926-2004), while stationed in England. In 1946, he joined the Southern Educational Film Production Service at the University of Georgia as writer of educational films for federal and state agricultural, educational, and public health agencies. The first film he wrote, directed, and produced was Palmour Street, about an African American family in Gainesville, Ga. Then in 1950, he moved to Washington, D.C., to make films for the Association of Medical Colleges. He also started with Nicholas Read a production company, Potomac Film Producers, that specialized in socially relevant films for government agencies, non-profit organizations, and corporate sponsors. In 1957, Stoney started his own production company, George C. Stoney Associates Inc. in New York, N.Y. Stoney's films were characterized by social interpretation and addressed such issues as disease and health care, mental health, race relations, education, farming, retirement, and urbanism. One of his earliest and most important films is the award-winning All My Babies (1953), produced for the Georgia Department of Health.

Through the next two decades, Stoney pioneered the field of socially relevant documentary filmmaking while teaching and training the next generation of filmmakers at the University of Southern California, the City College of New York, Columbia University, Stanford University, the International Honors Program, and at other leading American universities with film study programs. From 1968 to 1970, Stoney served as executive producer for the Challenge for Change project, a socially active documentary production wing of the National Film Board of Canada, that encouraged ordinary people to use media as a means to improve the quality of their lives. Stoney returned to the United States in 1970 to head up the undergraduate film department at New York University and to continue to produce his own films and videos.

George Stoney also is considered the father of public access television. Building on his work at the National Film Board of Canada, Stoney advocated the use of cable television channels by the public to enact social change. In 1972, he co-founded the Alternate Media Center, which trained citizens in the uses of video technology for use on public access television. In 1976, he was a founding member of the National Federation of Local Cable Programmers (now called the Alliance for Community Media) as an advocacy and support group for the cable movement.

Over the course of his career, Stoney wrote, directed, and produced over 50 documentaries and television series, including The Invader (1954), The Cry for Help (1962), How the Myth Was Made (1978), The Weavers: Wasn't that a Time (1982), Southern Voices (1985), Images of The Great Depression (1990), and The Uprising of '34 (1995). He has been a mentor and teacher to generations of filmmakers worldwide. George C. Stoney died in 2012.