Theodore Richards Conantthe documentary filmmaker and technology consultant, died on Wednesday, October 14, 2015, at home in Hanover, New Hampshire. He was 89 years old.

Mr. Conant developed an early in interest in radio and was an avid ham radio operator as a teenager. While still a student at the Putney School in Vermont, he made his first short film with the help of the pioneer American filmmaker Robert J. Flaherty, who made the first successful documentary, Nanook of the North. During World War II, Mr. Conant was recruited by the merchant marines at age of 17"€"despite flunking the physical"€"because of the dire need of skilled radio officers. After the war, he remained in Asia for a year and developed a lifelong interest in the culture, history and nascent film history of Korea.

When he finally returned home from the war, he learned Flaherty was working on The Louisiana Story and secured a position on the film crew. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 1951 with an honors degree in Economics, he returned to Asia to make a United Nations funded documentary about the plight of ordinary civilians during the Korean War. Drawing on footage taken during that period, he went on to make a number of documentaries. The most important, Children in Crisis, which portrayed the devastating effects of the long conflict on Korean children, won the award for best documentary film at the Berlin Film Festival in 1955.

During the 1960s, Mr. Conant went on to become a guest director of the National Film Board in Montreal, Canada, and later joined WGBH Educational Foundation in Boston, MA. Later, he worked as a technology consultant with Peter C. Goldmark at CBS Laboratories in Stamford, Conn., and James D. Wolfensohn at Schroders investment bank in New York.

Mr. Conant was the son of James Bryant Conant, the President of Harvard University and administrative director of the Manhattan Project. His mother, Grace Richards Conant, was the daughter of Theodore William Richards, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1914. He is survived by his wife, Ellen, and two children, James and Jennet, and one grandson.

At his request, there will be no funeral services.

Arrangements are under the direction of the Rand-Wilson Funeral Home of Hanover, NH.