Patricia Thompson | Documentary-maker, 63

Patricia Thompson, 63, a Paris-based U.S. television producer and an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, died Monday.

The cause was a cerebral hemorrhage, her husband, Jim Bittermann, a CNN correspondent, said.

Ms. Thompson, who moved to Paris in 1975 to work as a radio reporter, became a senior producer for NBC News, covering the revolutions in Iran and the Philippines; the marriage and death of Diana, Princess of Wales; and the Soviet-U.S. disarmament negotiations.

After a stint at ABC News in Paris, she created her own production company, the Paris Bureau, producing programs and documentaries for U.S. networks and cable channels. She covered news events such as the celebrations of the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution.

But her humor and eye for storytelling came through best in her documentaries.

The most recent was The Cheese Nun, a profile of Sister Noella, a Benedictine nun who upon being made cheese-maker of her abbey in Connecticut, studied microbiology and crisscrossed France to study cheeses. She is now one of the world's leading experts on the microbiology of cheese. The program was broadcast by PBS in the United States in 2006.

Ms. 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 show The Amazing Race.

Besides her husband, she is survived by a daughter, Tess Bittermann of Philadelphia.

- N.Y. Times News Service