Stephen Ives

Roles: Director

Over the last twenty-five years of work in public television, Stephen Ives has established himself as one of the nation’s leading independent documentary directors. His landmark series The West was seen by more than 38 million people nationwide during its PBS premiere in the fall of 1996. In 1987, he began a decade-long collaboration with filmmaker Ken Burns, as a consulting producer on the ground-breaking series, The Civil War and Baseball. His profile of the innovative Cornerstone Theater Company, aired on HBO in the fall of 1999, and Amato: A Love Affair with Opera, his PBS portrait of the world’s smallest opera company, earned him a nomination from The Director’s Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement. His profile of the 1930’s thoroughbred Seabiscuit, won a prime-time Emmy award, and Reporting America at War, his three-hour series about American war correspondents, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “television that matters…a visual document of power and clarity.” He has directed a series of acclaimed films for the American Experience series and his six-hour series The Great War, which explores America’s role in World War I, aired on PBS in 2017. For his work on The Great War he was honored with an award from the Writer’s Guild of America.