Thomas Furneaux Lennon (born November 3, 1951) is a documentary filmmaker. He was born in Washington, D.C., graduated from

Phillips Exeter Academy Phillips Exeter Academy (often called Exeter or PEA) is an Independent school, independent, co-educational, college-preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Established in 1781, it is America's sixth-oldest boarding school and educates an es ...

in 1968 and Yale University in 1973. Thomas F. Lennon's films, broadcast on PBS and

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...

, have won an Academy Award and have been nominated for the Oscar four times. He has also received two George Foster Peabody Awards, two national Emmys and two DuPont-Columbia Journalism awards. With filmmaker Ruby Yang, he mounted a vast multi-year AIDS prevention campaign seen over a billion times on Chinese television. Together they made a trilogy of short documentary films about modern China, including ''The Blood of Yingzhou District'', which won an Oscar in 2007, and ''The Warriors of Qiugang'', nominated in 2011, which profiles an Anhui Province farmer's multi-year campaign to halt the poisoning of his village water by a nearby factory. Three weeks after the Oscar nomination, the local government of Bengbu, in Anhui, announced a 200 million yuan (US$30 million) clean-up of the toxic site shown in the film. He produced two historical series on PBS: ''The Irish in America: Long Journey Home'' (1998) and ''Becoming American: The Chinese Experience'' with Bill Moyers (2003). ''The Battle Over Citizen Kane'' (1996) co-written with the late

Richard Ben Cramer Richard Ben Cramer (June 12, 1950 – January 7, 2013) was an American journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1979 for his coverage of the Middle East. Biography Cramer was born and r ...

, marked his first Oscar nomination. It premiered at Sundance and was adapted into a fiction film, '' RKO 281'', starring John Malkovich and Melanie Griffith. In 2017, he completed '' Knife Skills'' about the launch of Edwins, an haute cuisine French restaurant in Cleveland, staffed by men and women recently released from prison; in January 2018, this was nominated for an Oscar. "Sacred" (2016) explores the use of prayer and ritual in daily life. More than 40 filmmakers around the world contributed scenes to the film, which premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival, showed at 25 festivals worldwide and aired on PBS in December 2018. Since 2018, Thomas Lennon has served as the director of the Documentary Film Lab at Rutgers University. In 2021, Variety profiled him as one of the "top 50 film instructors from around the world." "Cutting Through Rocks" on which he served as a Contributing Producer won the International Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Lennon lives and works in New York City. He is married to the medical researcher Joan Reibman, best known for her work on the health of 9/11 survivors. He is at times confused with the writer-comedian Thomas Lennon and has twice had to send back large royalty checks.

Filmography

* "Cutting Through Rocks" (2024) Contributing Producer & Editing Consultant. Winner Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival * "This Is Pike County" (2024) Producer * "We Are Suns" (2021) Producer. Sarasota Film Festival Montclair Film Festival * " Knife Skills" (2017) (Producer-Director-Cinematographer) Academy Award nomination. Winner Audience Award, Traverse City Film Festival. San Francisco's Doc Stories, DocNYC and other festivals. * "Sacred" (2016) Producer & Director. Shot by 40 filmmaking teams worldwide. Film Festivals: Hong Kong, DocNYC, Amsterdam (IDFA), Biarritz (FIPA), Sebastopol, etc. Aired on PBS 2018 * "The Trail from Xingjiang" (2013) Senior Creative Consultant *"

Angle of Attack In fluid dynamics, angle of attack (AOA, α, or \alpha) is the angle between a Airfoil#Airfoil terminology, reference line on a body (often the chord (aircraft), chord line of an airfoil) and the vector (geometry), vector representing the relat ...

" (2011) – writer, cinematographer, producer —Public Television *'' The Warriors of Qiugang'' (2010) – writer, producer. Oscar nominee, Documentary Short Subject *'' Tongzhi in Love'' (2008) – producer. Jury Prize, San Francisco Int'l Film Festival *''The Supreme Court'', PBS (2007) – director (International Documentary Association, Best Series, 2007; Silver Gavel Award, American Bar Association, 2008) *'' The Blood of Yingzhou District'' (2006) – producer (Academy Award winner – best documentary short subject; 2007 Excellence in Media Award – Global Health Council International Documentary Festival; Chicago Doc Humanitarian Award – Chicago International Documentary Film Festival; Golden Reel Jury Prize, Best Short – VC FilmFest; Grand Jury Award – AFI Silverdocs Film Festival; Audience Award – Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival; Jury Prize Award – Documenta International Film Festival; Jury Prize Award – RiverRun International Film Festival; Nominated for Documentary Awards at the Hawaii International Film Festival, The Fund for Santa Barbara, the International Documentary Association, and the DOCNZ Film Festival) *''Terry Sanford & the New South'' (2006) – producer, director, writer (Full-Frame Documentary Festival (premiere)) *''Becoming American: The Chinese Experience'', PBS mini-series (2003) – series producer, writer (Emmy nominations (four); Writers' Guild nomination; IDA nomination; Christopher Award) *'' Unchained Memories: Readings from the Slave Narratives'',

(2003) – producer, director (Sundance Film Festival (premiere), Emmy nominations (two); Christopher Award) * *'' RKO 281'', HBO (1999) (starring John Malkovich, Schreiber, Melanie Griffith) – consultant (Golden Globe Award, Emmy Awards (three)) *''The Irish in America: Long Journey Home'', PBS mini-series (1998) – series producer, director, writer (Emmy Award (four nominations) Writers' Guild nomination, Grammy Award for soundtrack CD) *''

The Battle Over Citizen Kane ''The Battle Over Citizen Kane'' is a 1996 American documentary film directed and produced by Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein, from a screenplay by Lennon and Richard Ben Cramer, who also narrates. It chronicles the clash between Orson Welles ...

'', '' The American Experience'' ( PBS, 1996) – producer, director, writer (Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Academy Award nomination, Emmy Nomination, George Foster Peabody Award, Writers' Guild Award) *''The Battle of the Bulge'', PBS The American Experience (1994) – producer, writer (duPont-Columbia Award; Emmy nominations (two), George Foster Peabody Award) *''Tabloid Truth'', PBS Frontline (1994) – producer, writer (Writers' Guild nomination) *''The Choice'' (1992) – producer, writer (

San Francisco International Film Festival The San Francisco International Film Festival (abbreviated as SFIFF), organized by SFFILM, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in international film and vid ...

Grand Jury Award, George Foster Peabody Award) *''Seven Days in Bensonhurst'', '' Frontline'' (PBS, 1990) – producer, writer (Emmy, Outstanding Documentary, Writers' Guild, Outstanding Documentary Script.) *''Demon Rum'' (1989) – producer, writer

References

External links

* * http://www.peabodyawards.com/award-profile/the-american-experience-the-battle-over-citizen-kane {{DEFAULTSORT:Lennon, Thomas F. 1951 births Living people Film directors from Washington, D.C. Film producers from Washington, D.C. Place of birth missing (living people) Producers who won the Best Documentary Short Subject Academy Award