uncnews.unc.edu

	George Stoney Credit: Philip Pocock, 1977

Documentary filmmaker George C. Stoney, 93, creator of a film used around the world by UNESCO, will visit the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Oct. 16.

Stoney, who graduated from UNC in 1937, also is recognized for the pioneering social engagement of his films, his decades of mentoring young professionals and his early advocacy for public access television. He is credited with helping to create the Federal Communications Commission’s cable access requirements begun in 1972.

Stoney, a Winston-Salem native and professor of film at New York University, will attend a screening of his films and take questions from the audience in a free public program. A 5 p.m. reception will precede the 6 p.m. program at UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, just off South Road.

Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, will lead the question-and-answer session. The screening will include clips from six of Stoney’s films:

• “Palmour Street” (1949), a dramatized discussion of family relations in the African-American community for the Georgia Department of Public Health;
• “All My Babies” (1952), a training film about midwifery, also for the Georgia Department of Public Health;
• “Southern Voices” (1985), a story of the development and premiere performance of a symphonic work by Sorrel Doris Hays for the Chattanooga, Tenn., Symphony Orchestra;
• “We Shall Overcome” (1988), a film history of the song;
• “The Uprising of 34” (1995), documenting textile strikes in the South in 1934;
• “The Reunion for ‘All My Babies’” (in progress), tracking down the people delivered by midwife Mary Francis Hill Coley in the original film.

The program is sponsored by the University Library at Carolina, the Center for Documentary Studies and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, an annual event in Durham. For information, contact Liza Terll, UNC Friends of the Library, at (919) 962-4207 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Mary Francis Hill Coley (“Miss Mary”), the midwife featured in Stoney’s 1952 documentary “All My Babies,” Credit: George C. Stoney, 1952

“All My Babies,” one of Stoney’s first efforts, was eventually used around the world by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In 2002, the Library of Congress placed “All My Babies” on its National Film Registry. 

Stoney’s papers are part of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library.

After graduating from UNC, Stoney was southern correspondent for the periodical “Survey Graphic,” and he assisted political scientist and later Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche in a study of racial segregation published as “An American Dilemma” (1944). He also worked briefly as a secretary to author and UNC alumnus Thomas Wolfe.

In 1938, he became information officer for the New Deal agency Farm Security Administration in the Southeast. In World War II, he was a photo intelligence officer in the Air Force. Stoney joined the Southern Educational Film Production Service in 1946 as a writer and director. In 1953, he started his own production company for documentary films.

From 1968-1970, Stoney was executive producer of the Challenge for Change program at the National Film Board of Canada. He joined the faculty at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in 1970 and is teaching three classes this semester. He also is working on three major films: a reunion of “All My Babies,” a profile of the late Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and a documentary about the penal system, called “Staying Out.”

Note: Clips of selected Stoney films are available from Documentary Educational Resources: http://www.der.org/films/filmmakers/george-stoney.html
The March 1999 issue of the journal “Wide Angle” was devoted to Stoney:
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/wide_angle/toc/wan21.2.html

University Library contacts: Steve Weiss, (919) 962-1345, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Judy Panitch, (919) 962-1301, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589