Patricia Thompson, Emmy-Winning Documentary Filmmaker
A longtime resident of Paris, Thompson worked extensively in news in addition to her filmmaking.
Patricia Thompson, a television producer and an Emmy-winning documentarian, died December 20, 2010, in Paris, France. She was 63.
According to news reports, the cause was a cerebral hemorrhage.
Thompson had lived in Paris since 1975, when she relocated to work as a radio reporter. She later became a senior producer for NBC News and covered such stories as the revolutions in Iran and the Philippines, the marriage and death of Britain’s Princess Diana, and the Soviet-American disarmament negotiations.
She later created her own production company, the Paris Bureau, producing programs and documentaries for American networks and cable channels, and covering such events as the bicentennial of the French revolution in 1989.
Thompson won two Emmy awards for her work in Africa and the United States. She was also the French producer for a segment of the CBS reality competition series The Amazing Race.
Her most recent documentary, in 2006, was The Cheese Nun, about a Benedictine nun who became cheese-maker of her abbey in Connecticut, which led to her becoming an authority on the microbiology of cheese.
She Thompson was born in Chicago on August 18, 1947. After graduating from the University of Illinois, she earned a master’s degree in urban studies and law at Loyola University in Chicago.
She is survived by her husband, CNN correspondent Jim Bitterman, a CNN correspondent, their daughter and a sister.