Bonesteel Films Backstory

In 1996 Paul Bonesteel founded Bonesteel Films, formalizing his freelance production work into his namesake company in Atlanta, Georgia. Soon he was hired to produce media content for Apple Computer during the 1996 Olympic Games creating some of the first streaming content that Apple shared on its website.

Growing up with a super 8mm camera in his hands, and eyes glued to television and films Paul was drawn to making films of all kinds. Throughout college at NC State University, he studied reasonably hard and worked in television and films, learning from many craft-persons along the way.

In 1988 he joined Creative Video in Atlanta as a videographer and editor, quickly growing to produce and direct corporate and broadcast media while starting to make films on his own. A passion for kayaking led to his first hour long documentary; Rapid Diplomacy. Since then, Paul has produced and directed more than a dozen full-length documentary films, many distributed on PBS.

After meeting a team of Russian kayakers and a journalist here in the USA, he traveled to the Soviet Union where he shot and directed If The People Will Lead, a film that explored the role of the media in the fall of communism during that turbulent year.

Other documentary projects during the 1990’s focused on subjects as diverse as folk singer Robert Hoyt (Travels with Claude), a father and two son’s journey in Gates of the Arctic National Park (Caribou Bones) and extreme whitewater kayaking (The Adventures of Johnny Utah).

With a move to Asheville, NC in 1997 Bonesteel Films began producing content and advertising for Biltmore Estate, and other entities and agencies, but documentary films were always part of his on-going mission.

In 2002, after more than two years of research and production, Bonesteel completed The Mystery of George Masa, the biography of a Japanese photographer who immortalized the Appalachian Mountains in his vivid images and work creating Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In 2003, Bonesteel directed the Emmy-nominated Folkmoot USA, which told the story of the largest international folk dance festival in the world.

In 2005, The Great American Quilt Revival, brought a cast of hall-of-fame quilters, historians and collectors together to tell the story of how quilting became recognized as modern art and a force in popular culture through the past one hundred years.

Beginning in the mid-2000’s, Bonesteel Films began a 15-year relationship with Scripps Television producing content that ranged from the construction and design of their iconic HGTV Dream Homes, to DIY and Food Network programs and commercials. Creative collaborations abounded when Discovery Networks merged with HGTV leading to the creation of many short form content films for a variety of clients and Discovery networks.

In 2012, PBS’ American Masters broadcast the award-winning The Day Carl Sandburg Died. This film was an exploration into the life and work of the iconic American, Carl Sandburg. From his impoverished youth on the Illinois prairie to two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, the story traces the rediscovery of his work by writers, artists, scholars and performers.

Throughout the 20-teens, a vibrant staff and freelancers flourished at Bonesteel Films as many opportunities challenged the team with an always changing need for creative execution, casting, locations and innovative content.

In 2016 we produced a dynamic documentary, America’s First Forest: Carl Schenck and the Asheville Experiment, exploring the role of German forester Carl Schenck along with George Vanderbilt in the birth of the American forestry conservation movement in the early 1900s.

2020 brought the pandemic into the world changing many work-flows and relationships, but fortunately, the film Muni had been in production for several years and was soon completed. A love letter to the game of golf as told by the African-American caddies-turned-players who built a rich and vibrant golf culture on a municipal course, Muni was broadcast on both Golf Channel and PBS, at an important moment in American culture.

As Bonesteel Films reorganized in a post-pandemic world the focus on independent documentary filmmaking was reinvigorated as both a passion and pathway forward to the next decade of the company. With that focus came, Shadow of a Wheel a 4-hour, documentary series and feature length film that tells the story of 31 American teenagers who rode bicycles across the United States in the summer of 1982 sharing a journey that resonated throughout their lifetime.  The series and the feature film debuted in the summer of 2023 on PBS, film festivals and Outside TV.

In the spirit of the company, Carl Sandburg was famous for asking the question; “Where to? What next?” and our answer has always been simply; “Onward!”.