An award-winning filmmaker, Stanley Nelson has over 20 years' experience as a producer, director, and writer of documentary films and videos. Founder and president of Half Nelson Productions, Inc., an independent production company, his most recent production is The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords, a documentary on the history of African American newspapers which has received the support of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation, among others.

Nelson's independently-produced films include a number of PBS productions, including Shattering the Silences,a 90-minute film on the growing presence of and challenges to minority faculty in higher education; Methadone: Curse or Cure, a one-hour documentary on the methadone maintenance program for the treatment of heroin addiction; Two Dollars and a Dream: The Story of Madame C.J. Walker, on the life and times of the African American businesswoman who became the nation's first self-made woman millionaire (winner of the CINE Golden Eagle, and cited as the Best Production of the Decade by the Black Filmmaker Foundation); Puerto Rico: Our Right to Decide, the story of competing visions for the future of Puerto Rico, shot on location (CINE Golden Eagle); Freedom Bags, a documentary on the northern migration of African American domestic workers during the first half of the 20th century; and the South Africa segments of Mandela, the story of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.

Nelson's credits also include several productions for the Smithsonian Institution, including Free Within Ourselves, a documentary portrait of African American artists (winner of the CINE Golden Eagle), and Climbing Jacob's Ladder, a 30-minute film concerning African American church history. He has produced several films on location throughout West and southern Africa.

Nelson's television credits include serving as a producer for many PBS programs, including Listening to America and What Can We Do about Violence? with Bill Moyers , and Election '93, for which he was nominated for an Emmy award. He was also a producer for the acclaimed Fox-TV series, TV Nation.

A graduate of the Leonard Davis Film School at the City University of New York, Nelson has taught film production at Howard University. He has been a fellow of the American Film Institute, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Washington, D.C. Commission for the Arts, and a Revson Fellow at Columbia University. For three years, Nelson served on the selection panel for the Fulbright fellowship in film. In the spring of 1997, he was named a University Regents Lecturer at the University of California, San Diego.