Jon Alpert
Jon Alpert | |
|---|---|
 Alpert in 2010 | |
| Born | December 13, 1948 |
| Occupation(s) | Journalist, film director |
Jon Alpert (born c. December 13, 1948) is an American journalist and documentary filmmaker, known for his use of a cinéma vérité approach in his films.
Life and career
A native of Port Chester, New York, Jonathan B. Alpert is a 1970 graduate of Colgate University,[1] and has a black belt in karate.[2]
Alpert has traveled widely as an investigative journalist and has reported from Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Cuba, China, and Afghanistan. He has made films for NBC, PBS, and HBO. Over the course of his career, he has won 16 Emmy Awards and three DuPont-Columbia Awards. He has been nominated for a 2010 Academy Award in the category of Best Documentary, Short Subject for China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province.[3] He was nominated for a 2012 Academy Award in the same category for Redemption.[4] Alpert won the Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media with co-director Ellen Goosenberg Kent for their documentary War Torn: 1861-2010.[5]
In 1972, Alpert and his wife, Keiko Tsuno, founded the Downtown Community Television Center, one of the country's first community media centers.
In 1974, Alpert and Tsuno made Cuba: The People. Neither he nor Tsuno knew anything about film and couldn’t afford to learn, so they chose to use video. "Keiko’s brother would literally go to the factory, and as the first color portapak was coming off JVC’s assembly line, we’d get serial number one of everything," Alpert said. According to Alpert, the film was the first independently produced color documentary recorded on video.[6] Jon Alpert ended up interviewing Fidel Castro several times.[7]
Between 1979 and 1991, Alpert was the sole freelance video documentarist regularly featured on network television. His reports for NBC's The Today Show and Nightly News offered mass audiences a view of domestic and international affairs from a decidedly decentered perspective.[8]
In 1991, while employed by NBC, Alpert was the first American journalist to bring back uncensored video footage[9] from the first Persian Gulf War. The footage, much of it focusing on civilian casualties, was cancelled three hours before it was supposed to be aired, and Alpert was simultaneously fired. Later that year, CBS Evening News Executive Producer Tom Bettag planned to air the footage but this airing was also cancelled, and Bettag fired.[10] Jon Alpert was one of the few Western journalists to have conducted a videotaped interview with Saddam Hussein since the Persian Gulf War.[11]
In November 2021, HBO Max announced they would debut Alpert's Life of Crime documentaries, a thirty-six year chronicle of criminal and drug addicts in Newark, New Jersey. The previous entries A Year in the Life of Crime (1989) and Life of Crime 2 (1998) will be followed with updates on all of participants.[12]
Films
- 1974: Cuba: The People
- 1976: Chinatown: Immigrants in America (Co-Producer)[13]
- 1977: Vietnam: Picking up the Pieces (Co-Director/Co-Producer)[14]
- 1980: Third Avenue: Only the Strong Survive (Director)
- 1984: Hard Metal Disease (Producer/Director/Cinematographer/Sound)
- 1985: Vietnam: Talking to the people
- 1987: Junkie Junior (Director/Cinematographer/camera operator)
- 1989: One Year in A Life of Crime (Director/Producer) for America Undercover
- 1991: Rape: Cries from the Heartland (Executive Producer)
- 1995: High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell (Cinematographer/Producer) for America Undercover
- 1995: Lock-up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island
- 1998: Life of Crime 2
- 1998: A Cinderella Season: The Lady Vols Fight Back
- 2002: To Have and Have Not (Director)
- 2002: Afghanistan: From Ground Zero to Ground Zero (Director)
- 2002: Papa (Director/Producer)
- 2003: Latin Kings: A Street Gang Story (Director/Editor/Cinematographer/Producer)
- 2003: Coca and the Congressman (Director)
- 2004: The Last Cowboy (Director)
- 2004: Dope Sick Love (Executive Producer)
- 2004: Off to War (Executive Producer)
- 2004: Bullets in the Hood: A Bed-Stuy Story (Executive Producer)
- 2005: Venezuela: Revolution in Progress (Cinematographer)
- 2006: Baghdad ER (Director/Producer)
- 2007: Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq[15] (Producer/Director/Cinematographer)
- 2007: The Bridge TV Show (Executive Producer/Cinematographer)
- 2008: Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery (Co-Director/Co-Producer)[16]
- 2008: Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana (Director/Producer)[17]
- 2008: A Woman Among Boys (Co-Director/Co-Producer)
- 2009: China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (Co-Director/Co-Producer)[18]
- 2012: In Tahrir Square (Co-Director/Co-Producer)[19]
- 2013: Redemption (Co-Director)[20]
- 2014: The Other Man: F.W. de Klerk and the End of Apartheid (Executive Producer)
- 2015: The Latin Explosion: A New America (Director/Producer)
- 2016: Banking on Bitcoin (Producer)
- 2016: Mariela Castro's March (Director/Producer)
- 2017: Rock and a Hard Place (Director/Producer)
- 2017: Cuba and the Cameraman (Director/Producer/Writer)
- 2018: All for One (Co-Director)[21]
- 2019: Finding the Way Home (Producer/Director/Cinematographer/Sound)
- 2021: Life of Crime 1984-2020
References
- ^ "Documentary by Jon Alpert 70 earns Oscar nod". Colgate University. February 3, 2010. Retrieved December 1, 2014.
- ^ Carnegie Corporation of New York (2008). "Journalism in the service of democracy: A summit of Deans, Faculty, Students and Journalists - A Report of the Proceedings Sponsored by Carnegie Corporation of New York in Partnership with the Paley Center for Media" (PDF). Issue Lab.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ 2010 Oscar Full List | The 82nd Academy Awards
- ^ The 85th Academy Awards for 2013
- ^ "Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media Winners". Austen Riggs Center.
- ^ "DCTV celebrates 50 years of media activism and training". documentary.org. April 19, 2022.
- ^ Fidel Up Close: Filmmaker Jon Alpert on His Many Encounters With Castro Over the Past 30 Years Archived 2007-01-10 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited, 1st Edition by Deirdre Boyle, p.203
- ^ "Video | Robert Scheer Interviews Jon Alpert | Link TV". Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved July 18, 2011.
- ^ Project Censored 1991 - Story #1: CBS AND NBC SPIKED FOOTAGE OF IRAQ BOMBING CARNAGE Archived 2011-07-21 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Exclusive – Democracy Now! Airs Rare Interview With Saddam Hussein Shortly After First Gulf War Archived 2007-01-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "HBO documentary 'Life of Crime' returns to Newark 37 years later". NJ.com. November 12, 2021.
- ^ Chinatown: Immigrants in America (full program on Vimeo)
- ^ Vietnam: Picking up the Pieces (full program on Vimeo)
- ^ The Other James Gandolfini: "Sopranos" Actor Remembered For Support of Injured Vets, Community Media, Democracy Now! June 21, 2013
- ^ Jon Alpert Talks About His New Documentary, "Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery" on Democracy Now!
- ^ HBO Dirty Driving Home Page
- ^ “China's Unnatural Disaster”: Oscar-Nominated Doc on Sichuan Earthquake Brings World Attention to Chinese Crackdown on Dissidents A brief interview with Jon Alpert on Democracy Now!
- ^ "In Tahrir Square": HBO Doc on Egypt's Revolution Through Eyes of Democracy Now!'s Sharif Kouddous on Democracy Now! January 25, 2012
- ^ Redemption: Oscar-Nominated Doc Follows the Working Poor Who Survive on Collecting Bottles and Cans, Democracy Now! January 31, 2013
- ^ “All for One”: U.S. and Russian Filmmakers with Disabilities Collaborate in Powerful New Documentary, Democracy Now! August 10, 2018
External links
- Jon Alpert biography at Downtown Community Television Center
- Jon Alpert at allmovie
- Jon Alpert at IMDb
- Jon Alpert Discusses His Unfinished James Brown Documentary on Democracy Now!
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