Paul Wagner is an Academy Award winning writer-producer-director of documentary and dramatic films.

Paul's documentary credits include:

• Miles of Smiles (1982, 58 min., Telluride Film Festival, four regional Emmy Awards, PBS), which tells the story of the Pullman Porters who formed America's first black labor union.
• The Stone Carvers (1984, 28 min., Academy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary, Emmy Award for Outstanding Direction of a Documentary, PBS), a portrait of traditional Italian-American artisans.
• Out of Ireland (1995, 111 min., Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Aidan Quinn, and Brenda Fricker, Sundance Film Festival, PBS), which relates the history of Irish emigration to America.
• Signature: George C. Wolfe (1996, 58 minutes, PBS, National Educational Telecommunications Association Best Public Television Program of the Year, regional Emmy), a portrait of the Tony Award- winning director and playwright.
• A Paralizing Fear: The Story of Polio in America (1998, 90 min., PBS, Eric Barnouw Award for Best Historical Film of 1998, Emmy Award for Outstanding Research).

Wagner's first dramatic feature, Windhorse (1999, 97 minutes, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, and Rotterdam Film Festivals, Florida and D.C. Film Festival Audience Awards, and Santa Barbara Festival Best U.S. Independent Film & Best Director), tells the story of three Tibetans' struggle for freedom against the Chinese government. One of the world's first digital feature films, it was filmed clandestinely in Tibet and Nepal and released theatrically in one hundred U.S. cities by Shadow Distribution and on video by New Yorker Films.

For WHTJ, the Charlottesville, Virginia PBS station, Wagner produced Writers, Horses, ThreePresidents and The James River (2000-2003, 58 minutes each), from the series East of the Blue Ridge. Wagner also directed Three Roses, a teleplay about violence to women; produced Commonwealth, a concert program with folksinger John McCutcheon; and served as consulting producer on No Higher Honor a series of programs about Virginia governors.

In 2000, Wagner served as a consultant and writer on two network television pilots developed by Viacom Productions and executive producer Hugh Wilson for UPN and CBS.

Other films include The Battle of the Alamo (1996, 57 minutes, national cablecast), a historical documentary for the Discovery Channel; and The Congress of Wonders (1994, 23 minutes, Indiana Film Festival Grand Prize), a dramatic film based on Ed McClanahan’s short story.

In the 1980s, Wagner directed documentary films for the Smithsonian Institution about old-time medicine shows, museum education, family traditions, fishmongers, Southern pottery, the U.S. Postal Service, the Columbian Quincentenary, and anthropological rituals around the world. He served as executive producer for films on the history of insane asylums and on the French novelist Marcel Proust, both broadcast nationally on PBS. He has co-authored two books, both companion volumes to his documentary films, Out of Ireland (1994, Roberts Rinehart Publishers) and A Paralyzing Fear: the Triumph Over Polio in America (1998, TV Books).

Paul Wagner has been awarded many grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the D.C. Humanities Council, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and from the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic Media Fellowship Programs. In addition to the Oscar and the Emmy, his films have won many regional Emmy Awards, CINE Golden Eagles, the Irish Silver Harp Award, Blue and Red Ribbons from the American Film Festival and the Grand Prize from the National Educational Film Festival.

Wagner studied acting and directing for the theater with Joy Zinoman of the Studio Theatre in Washington. He adapted and directed "Falling Stars" (1989, Source Theatre, Washington, D.C.), wrote "Daddy's Guitar" (1992, Mill Mountain Theatre, Roanoke, Virginia), and conceived and produced "The Pearl" (1990, Source Theatre), a drama about an attempted slave escape from Washington in 1848. In the 1970s, Wagner performed as a country singer in nightclubs in Philadelphia, PA.

His awards include the Washington, D.C. Mayor's Award as Outstanding Emerging Artist and a citation as one of the “Top 100 Irish Americans.” His degrees, a BA in English and an MA in Communications, are from the University of Kentucky. He studied visual anthropology on a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and systems theory at Portland (Oregon) State University.

Paul and Ellen Casey Wagner, his wife and filmmaking partner, are based in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they produce under the banners of two organizations. Paul Wagner Productions, Inc. is a production company founded by Paul in 1982. American Focus, Inc. is a 501c3 non-profit corporation created by Ellen and Paul in 1989 to create independent film and video.