JANICE I. THOMPSON
Senior Producer/Director

Producer/director/composer, Janice Thompson, turned a personal love of art, music, and history, into a professional award-winning career. In addition to producing/directing live sporting events, sports talk programming and feature profiles for SportsChannel, The Michael Jordan Foundation, and Chicago s FOX 32, Thompson s early work also included "Voices," a documentary featuring Chicago-area Holocaust survivors, now in collection at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. She is widely sought as a producer and director for television programs in Chicago and nationally and is a prize winning music composer. Among her awards are 3 Emmy Awards, a Gold Apple, a Silver Apple, the Herman Kogan Award for Television Journalism, a Chris Award, and 2 Lente de Platas.

In 1992, Thompson was the first American producer allowed into the remote province of Guizhou, China to shoot a one-hour documentary about food and folk culture. The Emmy award winning "Hidden China", which aired on public television, led to future projects including "Hidden Mexico" (which aired on National PBS in 1996), and "Food For The Ancestors" (aired on national PBS in 1999 and 2000), "Hidden Korea" (aired on national PBS, 2000) and "Hidden India" (to air on national PBS, 2001). On these programs she has been producer, director, editor, and composer. Under contract with Nation Public Broadcasting, she is creating more programs in this series under the title, Hidden Journeys".

Among Prof. Thompson s recent projects were "Words & Music, Maestro Please!" an open rehearsal and interview with Conductor Daniel Barenboim for public television; "First From Chicago", a public television talk show featuring prominent Chicagoans; and "The Double-Edge Sword," a documentary in-progress recounting the experiences of American prisoners of war in the Far East during World War II. She is also working on a book related to the subject for a major publisher.

Ms. Thompson is now Director of the Center for Documentary Studies and Assistant Professor of Television in the College of Media Studies at one of the top-ranked production schools in the United States, Southern Illinois University. As a successful documentary maker and composer, Thompson has attracted wide international attention to the Center and works with documentarians from across the country and from abroad.

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