Joseph C. Stillman, is a former Texan who has lived in Otsego County, New York for thirty years. He graduated from Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California in 1974 with a degree in motion picture production. Soon afterwards, he cut his teeth as a cameraman on independent movies in Hollywood and founded his company, La Paloma Films.

In 1979, he moved to New York City where he began producing and directing movies and TV commercials. He has worked with some of the greatest and most talented actors and filmmakers in the industry which includes the likes of Rod Steiger, Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Plummer, Maggie Smith, Elizabeth Ashley, Peter Falk, Elaine May, Martin Sheen, and Max Von Sydow, just to name a few.  He has also worked on projects with such legendary filmmakers as Sven Nykvist, whose film “The Ox” was nominated for an Academy award. He was the Line Producer of that movie and spent nine months in Sweden where it was filmed. Previous to that project, he was the production manager of “Evil Dead 2,” a cult classic horror film by director Sam Raimi (“For the Love of the Game” and all three of the current “Spiderman” movies).

In the early 80’s when Sam Walton was still alive, he produced the first seven years of the “Buy American” TV commercials for Wal-Mart. That assignment, as well as others, took him to every state in the US except Alaska. He spent six months at to the top of the world at Elsmere Island and Greenland as the unit manager in the Eastern Arctic making “Cook & Peary, the Race to the Pole,” a TV movie for CBS. In 1990, he was the genesis behind “Susquehanna Stories,” the first regional dramatic series in the history of PBS, which was done through WSKG in Binghamton. He produced and directed “Ruby Moon,” which was one of five films which were done for that project. The series went on to win seven state and national awards, including best series by the New York State Broadcasters Association.

In 2004, he founded the Upper Catskill Television Network and a year later implemented the “High Definition Creative Community Initiative.” That project enabled forty new filmmakers to create four original movies. 

His recent projects include “Logjam,” an independent comedy feature film which he co-directed and produced with Steve Monosson and the documentary feature, “From Mills River to Babylon and back… the Jimmy Massey Story.”