GEORGE STONEY: A REEL OF CLIPS
1952-2009 • 35 Minutes • Color / B&W • 35mm / 16mm / Video / Digital Video
This is a reel of clips from films which George Stoney collaborated with many people to make. It was assembled by Mike Hazard.
WE SHALL OVERCOME
This film is a history of the song. The singer is Jamila Jones, telling a story about an event at the famous Highlander folk school in Tennessee. That was the place where Rosa Parks said she learned that she “could trust some white people”. The film was produced by George Stoney, Harold Leventhal and Jim Brown (a former student of George’s who also directed). (1988)
PAULO FREIRE IN ACTION
This piece is from a trailer for a major work in progress on the late Brazilian educator and agitator, Paulo Freire. Freire taught culture is everything humans make, from a shoe to a song.
UPRISING OF ’34
Stoney taught a class at NYU on images of the thirties. This film made with Judith Helfand and Susanne Rostock documents the textile strikes in the South in 1934. The texture of the piece is like a textile. (1995)
NEWCOMERS
Made for the Methodist Board of Missions, this is a study of immigrants–people moving from the country to the city. Many of Stoney’s films find a big picture in local details. (1961)
YOU ARE ON INDIAN LAND
This work was produced with Mohawk activist Mike Mitchell at Akwesasne Reserve for the National Film Board of Canada’s “Challenge for Change” series for which Stoney was executive producer. (1969)
HOW THE MYTH WAS MADE
George used to say he has dumb luck. His grandfather was the doctor on the island in Ireland where the legendary maker of documentary film, Robert Flaherty, shot his film MAN OF ARAN. So Stoney’s film, exploring the effects Flaherty’s film had on the island and its people, is digging into his own roots as an individual while simultaneously studying the work of his intellectual mentor as a producer of nonfiction films. (1979)
ALL MY BABIES
When Stoney was a boy delivering newspapers, he was curious about the occasional black women with satchels he would spot on the streets of Winston Salem, North Carolina, before dawn. Later he learned these early risers were midwives.
This is a training film about midwifery which transcends the form. It was selected by the Library of Congress for placement on the National Film Registry. Always interested in the effects a film has on the filmed and filmers, George was amused to report everyone on the crew had babies after making this one. (1952)
SHEPHERD OF THE NIGHT FLOCK
This is a documentary of a jazz ministry in Manhattan with Father John Garcia Gensel. George’s Dad was a minister, and some liken Stoney’s work in the field to being a kind of shepherd of the media flock. It was edited by Paul Barnes, the chief editor for Ken Burns. (1975)
GETTING OUT
In this clip we witness the poet Robert Sanchez speak about how he learned poetry and theater matter. The arts saved his life. Directed by David Bagnall and George Stoney, a sequel called STAYING OUT is in progress. More than 600,000 people are released from prisons in America every year. (2005)
FLESH IN ECSTASY
This is from a film about the sculptor Gaston Lachaise and the woman he loved, Isabel Dutaud Nagel. Directed by David Bagnall and George Stoney, it is a video valentine for George’s companion Betty Puleston—whose great aunt Belle was the French-American sculptor’s wife, model and obsession. (2009)
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