[7] Legacy tells the inspiring story of how members of one African-American family, filmed over a five-year period, recovered from the loss of their child, broke free from welfare, overcame addiction, and escaped the specter of violence in their community.
In addition to Lending's national Emmy for the ABC Afterschool Special Shades of a Single Protein, documentaries in the No Time to be a Child series (Growin’ Up Not A Child, Breaking Ties, and Time to Speak) have garnered Lending numerous awards including a national Emmy nomination for Outstanding Documentary and several Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism, New York Festival World Medals, Cine Eagles, among others.
In 2008, Lending was awarded a 1.5 million dollar grant by the Wallace Foundation[13] to produce, direct and photograph a documentary film and outreach project for PBS entitled, The Principal Story.
This film follows two very passionate and committed public school principals as they relentlessly work to improve the educational standards for their students, over 98% of them coming from families living below the poverty line.
While exploring issues of education and manhood, the film follows two determined young black men for five years from the time they graduate high school through college.
Filmed over five and a half years, All The Difference weaves together the stories of two tough, yet promising young black men as they navigate their lives in broken homes and low-income, high-risk communities in Chicago.
The film explores the factors in their lives (education, parents and grandparents, teachers, role models, personal drive and community support) that made All The Difference in helping them be the first in their families to most likely escape poverty and secure a place in the middle class.
Produced, directed and written by Tod Lending, Legacy is the unprecedented portrait of an African-American family that dramatically captures their successes and failures as they struggle to overcome the devastating effects of poverty, welfare, and community violence.
The Principal Story, a $1.5 million national multiplatform broadcast film and outreach project, was selected for full funding by The Wallace Foundation in response to its RFP to help elevate the visibility of leadership as a lever for school improvement.
The Foundation was seeking a film that would provide compelling and credible stories of principals and their leadership teams whose work could result in schoolwide improvement and academic achievement for youth.
In The Principal Story, all three leaders oversee a majority of low-income student populations facing the testing challenges of the No Child Left Behind Act.
Above water, powerful live action images capture the Vezo fishing, the villages on the coastline, the sea, and Narcia looking straight into the camera as she tells her story.
By presenting Narcia's story as a simple fable, the solution to the family's survival becomes an archetypal lesson that can be applied to other situations of poverty and hunger on coastlines throughout the world.
In 2008, when this film was completed, Female juvenile offenders had the fastest growing rates of incarceration; yet, media access to their stories and lives was extremely limited because they were minors.
In this very, intimate, honest, and provocative character study, the story of juvenile offender Aimee Meyers unfolds over four years as she struggles to overcome her addictions and destructive behavior.
The film is unique in its comprehensive presentation of strategies employed by the justice system to enforce punishment, yet assist youthful wrongdoers in finding a productive path.
Aimee's distinctive voice, and the many issues that her story embodies (mental health, abuse, addiction, family dysfunction, education, juvenile criminal justice) will inspire the public to wrestle with these painful realities that are confronting an ever-growing number of young women.
Produced, directed and written by Tod Lending, Time to Speak features young survivors who are at different stages of struggling to overcome their experience of abuse and neglect.
Breaking Ties takes us inside the lives of these three kids, telling the story from their unique point of view while showing how poverty has molded their sense of the world and their future in it.
This one hour national PBS documentary examines what support structures these children need in order to overcome their predicaments; what effects their surroundings have on their cognitive and emotional development; and how they make sense of the seemingly senseless brutality that they witness in their daily lives.
Their stories afford a rare and intimate, and ultimately powerful portrait that will challenge the viewer to reshape their thinking about what these children need in order to have healthy and productive lives.
After being tortured and narrowly escaping execution during Liberia's civil war, Rosevelt Henderson makes his way to America with three of his children but is forced to leave his pregnant wife behind.
He works as a janitor, airport van driver, and assembly line worker in order to support his family and help his wife flee their war-torn country.
By capturing Rosevelt's day-to-day struggles, frustrations, and achievements, viewers come to appreciate the distance he has traveled during his harrowing journey from torture and desperation in his native Liberia to security and stability in his newly adopted homeland.
Chicago based, vocalist-songwriter-pianist Patricia Barber has earned a reputation as a fiercely independent artist who has paid enough dues to creatively call the shots on the kind of albums she wants to make.
She has been in the vanguard of the new school of female jazz vocalists who in the past decade have been exploring intriguing improvisational terrain beyond classic balladry and bop-infused standards.
One year after the tragedy the Center for Mind Body Medicine arrived in Haiti to train healthcare workers in how to deal with the effects of PTSD.