Thomas Lennon's work in documentary film has earned him an Academy Award and four Academy nominations, with a consistent pattern of receiving awards and nominations in pairs. This includes two national Emmys, two duPont-Columbia awards, two George Foster Peabody awards, and two films that premiered at Sundance.
In 2017, Lennon completed "Knife Skills", a documentary about a high-end French restaurant staffed by individuals with criminal records, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Concurrently, he directed "Sacred", a global documentary exploring the role of prayer and ritual in daily life, featuring contributions from over 40 filmmaking teams worldwide. "Sacred" premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival in November 2016 and has been invited to over 25 international festivals, with a planned PBS broadcast in 2018.
Lennon collaborated with Ruby Yang on a trilogy of films set in China, including "The Blood of Yingzhou District", which won an Oscar in 2007, and "The Warriors of Qiugang", nominated for an Oscar in 2011. The latter film tells the story of a farmer's multi-year campaign to halt the poisoning of his village's water and land, resulting in a massive cleanup effort by local authorities. Lennon and Yang also founded the China AIDS Media Project, which implemented a groundbreaking AIDS awareness campaign seen over a billion times on Chinese television and the Internet.
In 2003, Lennon was the series producer and lead writer of "Becoming American", a six-hour PBS series with Bill Moyers tracing Chinese immigration from the 19th century to the present. The series earned four Emmy nominations. He also worked on "The Irish in America: Long Journey Home", a 1998 PBS series that premiered to over ten million viewers, earning four Emmy nominations and a Grammy for best folk album.
Lennon's other notable works include "The Battle over Citizen Kane" (1996),which was featured at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals, and numerous films for public television's Frontline and The American Experience. He learned his craft in the Close-up Division of ABC News, working on assignments in the Soviet Union, South America, and the Middle East.
Despite his achievements, Thomas Lennon is occasionally confused with the comic actor and writer with the same name, and has had to return large royalty checks on two occasions.
