Barry Clark

Barry Clark has been responsible for the production of more than 200 hours of television programming, including a number of high-rated non-fiction specials and series broadcast on PBS and the Discovery Channel. Through Mandalay Media Arts, headed by former Sony Pictures Chairman Peter Guber, Clark is currently involved in the development of an animated 3D feature film and two 3D large format films.  Clark’s credits range from docudramas and anthology series to feature films, non-fiction television series and specials, and large format films. Drawing upon an academic background in chemical physics (Harvard) and physical chemistry (McGill University), he has written, directed, and produced numerous programs that deal with scientific discovery, socio-political issues, and the natural world.

Clark began his film career in the mid-1960's when he produced and directed the award-winning theatrical short A la Mod. Later, as head of production for Henson Associates, he co-produced with Jim Henson several innovative television commercials in addition to the critically-acclaimed NBC special Youth 68. In the late 1960's he produced and directed the syndicated special Rated X: Censorship and the Movies in addition to writing and directing a number of episodes of the NBC half-hour series The Challenging Sea plus the CBS half-hour series Animal World. During the early 1970's he served as a writer and associate producer at Wolper Productions, and over the next four years, while working with Walt Disney Productions, he wrote the documentary special The Restless Congo and served as writer and associate producer on seven episodes of the CBS prime-time series The Wonderful World of Disney.

In the late 70's Clark wrote, directed, and produced 5 award-winning nature specials for Bill Burrud Productions and in the same period he wrote the Emmy-Award winning ABC After-School Special My Mom’s Having a Baby plus several episodes of the ABC half-hour adventure series Salty. In the early 80's Clark wrote and directed the HBO special Eleanor Roosevelt: An Uncommon Woman plus the docudramas FDR: The Fireside Chats and Martin Luther King: The Letter from Birmingham Jail.  In the mid-80’s he wrote several episodes of the ABC magazine series Special Edition and produced, directed, and wrote the five-part series Mysteries, Myths, and Legends, also for ABC. In the same period he  produced and directed the award-winning historical series American Diary, hosted by E.G. Marshall, plus the WWII history series The American Chronicles, hosted by Eric Sevareid. Among his credits as a writer during this period are the feature films Escape from Angola and Challenge of Adventure plus several episodes of Ivan Tors’ underwater adventure series Oceania.

In the late 1980's Clark wrote and directed the feature film Bimini Code and wrote the teleplays for several episodes of the Disney Channel half-hour adventure series Danger Bay.  In addition he served as series producer and director of the 24-episode half-hour mythology series The Secret World, hosted by Christopher Lee and broadcast on TBS. In the late 80's and early 90's Clark wrote and/or produced several one-hour specials for the multiple award-winning PBS prime-time series’ Nova and  Nature, including Camels of the Clouds, Under the Emerald Sea, The Secret Life of Dolphins, Yellowstone on Fire and the widely-seen special Monkeys on the Edge, a profile of the primates of Brazil’s critically-endangered Atlantic Coastal Forest.  In the same period he produced and wrote three environmental films, filmed in Pakistan and Brazil and sponsored by The World Bank for presentation at the ECO-92 summit in Rio, as well as several multipart non-fiction series for The Discovery Channel, including Secrets of the Deep, Outlaws and Lawmen, Ultimate Guide, and Hunters.

Since the early 1990's Clark has played an active role in the promotion of high- definition technology for television and theatrical productions. In the mid-90’s he produced one of the first U.S. high-definition television programs, the $1.45 million-budget PBS special Jaguar: Year of the Cat – the second highest-rated program of the season when broadcast on PBS -- and in 2000, as co-chairman and co-founder of Mandalay Media Arts, he produced and wrote the two-hour $2 million-budget PBS high-definition special Sahara -- one of the first programs to be finished in the 1080/24p HD format and the first program to be broadcast in the U.S. in Dolby 5.1 surround sound. In 1999 he served as co-executive producer and co-writer of the $7 million-budget IMAX 3D film Galapagos, a coproduction between Mandalay Media Arts and the Smithsonian Institution that has played in 30 countries to date and grossed nearly $30 million. In 2000 Clark served as co-executive producer on That’s Black Entertainment, a two-hour special produced by Mandalay for Showtime, and executive produced Songs Under a Big Sky, a high-definition world music special co-produced by Mandalay with National Geographic Television and Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records.

In 2001 Clark collaborated with ERWDA--the environmental agency of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi--on the development of the 3D IMAX film “Across the Sands,” a coproduction with Mandalay Media Arts. In 2005, again through Mandalay, he produced A Thousand Roads, a 40-minute signature film for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC. From 2006-2008 he developed When Giants Ruled the World, a $100 million 3D animated feature for production by Mandalay and release through Universal Pictures. During the period from 2008 through early 2010 he worked with Evergreen Films of Los Angeles to forge an alliance between the company and Panasonic Corporation to fund and produce a slate of 3D theatrical and 3D television productions. In 2010, Clark, together with a creative team from Telenova, developed the protocol for the production of a landmark film for the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Clark is currently developing a documentary motion picture for Walt Disney Productions (tentatively titled “Universus”) that tells the story of the birth, evolution, and projected future of the Universe.

From 1992 through 2001 Clark served as chairman of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival and he currently serves on the board of the Digital Cinema Society, the BLUE Ocean Festival, and the recently-established Hollywood 3D Steering Committee.