George C. Stoney

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For other persons of the same name, see George Stoney.

George C. Stoney (1916-) is a professor of film and cinema studies at New York University, and a pioneer in the field of documentary film. Stoney directed several influential films including All My Babies and How the Myth Was Made. He is considered as the father of public access television^[1].

George Stoney studied journalism at NYU and the University of North Carolina. He has worked as a photo intelligence officer in World War II, for the Farm Security Administration an information officer, and as a freelance journalist. In 1946, he joined the Southern Educational Film Service as writer and director. He started his own production company in 1950, and has made over 40 documentary films on wide ranging subjects. All My Babies, one of his first films, received numerous awards and was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2002.

Stoney was also the director of the Challenge for Change project, a socially active documentary production wing of the National Film Board of Canada from 1966-70.

With Red Burns, Stoney co-founded the Alternate Media Center in 1972, which trained citizens in the tools of video production for a brand new medium, public access television. An early advocate of democratic media, Stoney is often cited as being the Father of Public Access Television. Today, Stoney sits on the Board of Directors for the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and is active in the Alliance for Community Media. Each year, the ACM presents "The George Stoney Award" to an organization or individual who has made an outstanding contribution to championing the growth and experience of humanistic community communications.