Robert Stone (director)
Robert Stone is a British-American documentary filmmaker. His work has been screened at dozens of film festivals and televised around the world, notably several times on PBS's American Experience series. One of his most recent works is Earth Days (2009), about the beginnings of the environmental movement in the USA.[1] Earth Days was nominated for the Sheffield Green Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest in 2009.
Biography
Stone was born in England and educated in the United States. His father Lawrence Stone was a noted historian[2] and chair of the History Department at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ where Robert grew up, graduating Princeton High School in 1976. He was later educated at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, did a brief stint at Sorbonne University in Paris and at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York. His debut work was the Academy Award-nominated Radio Bikini (1988), about nuclear tests performed around Bikini Atoll in 1946.
Known in large part for his innovative use of archival material in historical documentaries, Stone has directed several well received documentaries that he has shot himself, including American Babylon (2000) and, most recently, Pandora's Promise (2013), which makes the environmental case for nuclear energy as a solution to climate change.
Entertainment Weekly film critic Owen Gleiberman stated that Stone "may be the most under-celebrated great documentary filmmaker in America."[3] His films Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004) and Oswald's Ghost (2008) both received Emmy nominations for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking; Gleiberman hailed them as "two of the most explosively insightful documentaries of the last decade".[4]
His only foray into fiction filmmaking was a counter-factual fake historical documentary for German television called World War Three in 1998. In addition to his work making feature-documentaries, in the early 1990s he was commissioned to create a 24-part semi-interactive permanent installation at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston.
His work with environmental issues, particularly the worldwide acclaim surrounding his film Pandora's Promise, led him to co-found the non-profit clean energy advocacy group Energy for Humanity [2] with environmental campaigner Kirsty Gogan and philanthropist Daniel Aegerter. Stone is also one of 18 co-authors of the Ecomodernist Manifesto which challenges conventional thinking about the meaning of sustainable development.[5]
Stone has had four world premiers at the Sundance Film Festival (including Closing Night Film in 2009). His work has been screened and honored at dozens other festivals worldwide.
Stone lives and works in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife and two sons.
Filmography
- Radio Bikini (1988)
- The Satellite Sky (1990)
- Farewell, Good Brothers (1992)
- World War Three (1998) aka "Der Dritte Weltkrieg"
- American Babylon (2000)
- Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst (2004) aka "Neverland: The Rise and Fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army
- Hollywood Vietnam (2005)
- Oswald's Ghost (2008)
- The Civilian Conservation Corps (2009; broadcast by PBS's American Experience)
- Earth Days (2010)
- Pandora's Promise (2013)
- The Men Who Sold the Moon (in production, 2015)[6]
Stone has published an official filmography.[7]
An Ecomodernist Manifesto
In April 2015, Stone joined with a group of scholars in issuing An Ecomodernist Manifesto.[8][9] The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist, Stewart Brand, Barry Brook. Ruth DeFries, Erle Ellis, Christopher Foreman, David Keith, Martin Lewis, Mark Lynas, Ted Nordhaus, Roger A. Pielke, Jr., Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff, Michael Shellenberger, and Peter Teague[10]
References
- ^ Sundance Honor for Film of Early Save-the-Earth Activists
- ^ a b Robert Stone interviewed on the TV show Triangulation on the TWiT.tv network
- ^ Gleiberman, Owen (24 Jan 2013). "Sundance: What makes 'The Way, Way Back' a crowd-pleaser? Plus 'Pandora's Promise,' a radically sane and important documentary about how nuclear power could save us". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 30 September 2013.
- ^ Gleiberman, Owen (18 April 2010). "40 years after Earth Day, 'Earth Days' reveals that much of what you think you know about the modern environmental movement is wrong". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 30 September 2013.
- ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/business/an-environmentalist-call-to-look-past-sustainable-development.html?_r=0
- ^ Robert Stone (2015-03-24). "Breaking News: The Men Who Sold the Moon". Robert Stone Productions (Press release). Retrieved 2015-03-29.
- ^ Robert Stone. "Filmography". Robert Stone Productions. Retrieved 2015-03-29.
- ^ "An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015.
A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.
- ^ Eduardo Porter (April 14, 2015). "A Call to Look Past Sustainable Development". The New York Times. Retrieved April 17, 2015.
On Tuesday, a group of scholars involved in the environmental debate, including Professor Roy and Professor Brook, Ruth DeFries of Columbia University, and Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute in Oakland, Calif., issued what they are calling the "Eco-modernist Manifesto."
- ^ "Authors An Ecomodernist Manifesto". ecomodernism.org. Retrieved April 17, 2015.
As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene.