Gene Youngblood (May 30, 1942 – April 6, 2021)[1][2] was an American theorist of media arts and politics, and a respected scholar in the history and theory of alternative cinemas.

[3][4] For ten years in the 1960s, Gene Youngblood was a journalist for newspapers, television, and radio in Los Angeles.

He was a reporter and film critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (1962–1967), a reporter for KHJ-TV, arts commentator for KPFK, and from 1967 to 1970 he was associate editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Free Press,[5] the first and largest of the underground newspapers of that era.

He is also known for his pioneering work in the media democracy movement, a subject on which he taught, wrote, and lectured, beginning in 1967.

[4][6][7] Youngblood has held several academic posts in his career, but is best known for his time with the Film/Video School at California Institute of the Arts and for helping to found the Moving Image Arts department at the College of Santa Fe.