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, 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.
