Robert Stone is a British-American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

maker. His work has been screened at dozens of film festivals and televised around the world, notably seven of his films have appeared on

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

's ''

American Experience ''American Experience'' is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American his ...

'' series and four of his films have premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (including Closing Night Film in 2009). He is an Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary and a three-time Emmy nominee for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.

Life and career

Stone was born in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and educated in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. His father

Lawrence Stone Lawrence Stone (4 December 1919 – 16 June 1999) was an English historian of early modern Britain, after a start to his career as an art historian of English medieval art. He is noted for his work on the English Civil War and the history of marr ...

was a noted historian and chair of the History Department at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

where Robert grew up, graduating Princeton High School in 1976. He was later educated at the

University of Wisconsin at Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

, did a brief stint at

Sorbonne University Sorbonne University (french: Sorbonne Université; la Sorbonne: 'the Sorbonne') is a public research university located in Paris, France. The institution's legacy reaches back to 1257 when Sorbonne College was established by Robert de Sorbon ...

in Paris and at the

Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute (originally the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute) is an acting school founded in 1969 by actor, director, and acting teacher Lee Strasberg. The Institute is located in Union Square on East 15th Street, a ...

in New York. 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 ''Pandora's Promise'' is a 2013 documentary film about the nuclear power debate, directed by Robert Stone. Its central argument is that nuclear power, which still faces historical opposition from environmentalists, is a relatively safe and clean ...

'' (2013), which makes the environmental case for nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. Robert-Stone-director

His only foray into fiction filmmaking was a counter-factual fake historical documentary for German television called ''

World War Three World War III or the Third World War, often abbreviated as WWIII or WW3, are names given to a hypothetical worldwide large-scale military conflict subsequent to World War I and World War II. The term has been in use since at ...

'' 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 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. He also co-authored a companion book of the same name to be published by Ballantine Books. Stone lives in New York's

Hudson Valley The Hudson Valley (also known as the Hudson River Valley) comprises the valley of the Hudson River and its adjacent communities in the U.S. state of New York. The region stretches from the Capital District including Albany and Troy south to ...

with his wife, Shelby Stone, a film and television produce, and his two sons, Luc and Caleb, from a previous marriage.

Accolades

His debut work was the Academy Award-nominated ''

Radio Bikini ''Radio Bikini'' is a 1988 American documentary film directed by Robert Stone. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 1988 for Best Documentary Feature. It was later aired on the PBS series '' The American Experience''. Summary The film do ...

'' (1988), about

nuclear tests Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detonations are affected by ...

performed around

Bikini Atoll Bikini Atoll ( or ; Marshallese: , , meaning "coconut place"), sometimes known as Eschscholtz Atoll between the 1800s and 1946 is a coral reef in the Marshall Islands consisting of 23 islands surrounding a central lagoon. After the Second ...

in 1946. Starting in 2017, Stone wrote, directed and edited a 6-hour documentary mini-series for PBS called '' Chasing the Moon'', an epic political and social history of the space race. The film aired in 2019 coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the first lunar landing, earning Stone his third Emmy nomination for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and his second nomination the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay, and a duPont-Columbia Award among many other awards.

Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...

film critic

Owen Gleiberman Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for ''Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...

stated that Stone "may be the most under-celebrated great documentary filmmaker in America." 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". For ''

Earth Days ''Earth Days'' is a 2009 documentary film about the history of the environmental movement in the United States, directed by Robert Stone and distributed by Zeitgeist Films in theaters. ''Earth Days'' premiered at the 2009 Wisconsin Film Festival, ...

'' (2009), Stone received a nomination for the

Writers Guild of America Award for Best Documentary Screenplay A writer is a person who uses written words in different writing style In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. As Bryan Ray notes, however, sty ...

Filmography

*''

'' (1988) *''The Satellite Sky'' (1990) *''Farewell, Good Brothers'' (1992) *''

'' (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 The United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was a small, American far-left organization active between 1973 and 1975; it claimed to be a vanguard movement. The FBI and American law enforcement considered the SLA to be the ...

'' *''Hollywood Vietnam'' (2005) *''Oswald's Ghost'' (2008) *''The Civilian Conservation Corps'' (2009; broadcast by

's ''

'') *''

'' (2009) *''

'' (2013) *''Cold War Roadshow'' (2014) *'' Chasing the Moon'' (2019) *'' Taken Hostage'' (2022)

''An Ecomodernist Manifesto''

In April 2015, Stone joined with a group of scholars in issuing ''An Ecomodernist Manifesto''. The other authors were: John Asafu-Adjaye, Linus Blomqvist,

Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the auth ...

, Barry Brook.

Ruth DeFries Ruth S. DeFries (born October 20, 1956) is an environmental geographer who specializes in the use of remote sensing to study Earth's habitability under the influence of human activities, such as deforestation, that influence regulating biophysic ...

Erle Ellis Erle Christopher Ellis (born 11 March 1963 in Washington, DC) is an United States of America, American environmental scientist. Ellis's work investigates the causes and consequences of long-term ecological changes caused by humans at local to globa ...

, Christopher Foreman,

David Keith David Keith may refer to: * David Keith (novelist) (1906–1994), pen name of American scholar Francis Steegmuller *David Keith (actor) (born 1954), American film and TV performer and director *David Keith (physicist), Canadian-born Harvard Profess ...

, Martin Lewis,

Mark Lynas Mark Lynas (born 1973) is a British author and journalist whose work is focused on environmentalism and climate change. He is a contributor to ''New Statesman'', ''The Ecologist'', ''Granta ''and ''Geographical ''magazines, and ''The Guardian'' ...

, Ted Nordhaus, Roger A. Pielke Jr., Rachel Pritzker, Joyashree Roy, Mark Sagoff,

Michael Shellenberger Michael D. Shellenberger (born June 16, 1971) is an American author and former public relations professional whose writing has focused on the intersection of politics, the environment, climate change and nuclear power, as well as more recently on ...

, and Peter Teague

References

External links

*
Robert Stone Productions
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stone, Robert American documentary filmmakers American Experience British emigrants to the United States Living people Film directors from New Jersey Film directors from New York City Place of birth missing (living people) University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Year of birth missing (living people) People from Princeton, New Jersey Princeton High School (New Jersey) alumni British environmentalists