Ian Cheney is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker. He grew up in New England and received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Yale University.
After graduate school, Cheney co-created, co-produced, and starred in the feature documentary King Corn, which was released theatrically in 60 cities and awarded a George Foster Peabody Award in 2009. He subsequently directed the feature documentary The Greening of Southie, featured in The New Yorker and on Good Morning America; Truck Farm, the story of urban agriculture in New York City; The City Dark, a feature documentary about light pollution and the disappearing night; and The Search for General Tso, a feature documentary about American Chinese food. His most recent film, Bluespace, which he worked on while in residence, explores the terraforming of Mars and the waterways of New York City.
He is a co-founder of FoodCorps, a nationwide public service organization. In 2011 he and longtime collaborator Curt Ellis were awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for their work in sustainability. In 2014-2015, Cheney was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. A visiting professor at the Università degli Studi di Scienze Gastronomiche, he travels frequently to show his films, lead workshops, and give talks about the human relationship to the natural world.
