Jon Alpert

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Jon Alpert
VOA CHINESE Jon Alpert 4Mar10.jpg
Alpert in 2010
Born 1948 (age 75–76)
United States
Occupation Journalist, film director

Jon Alpert (born c. 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, Alpert is a 1970 graduate of Colgate University,[1] and has a black belt in karate.[citation needed]

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 15 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.[2] He was nominated for a 2012 Academy Award in the same category for Redemption.[3] Alport won the Erikson Institute Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media with co-director Ellen Goosenberg Kent for their documentary War Torn: 1861-2010.[4]

In 1972, Alpert and his wife, Keiko Tsuno, founded the Downtown Community Television Center, one of the country's first community media centers. He has interviewed Fidel Castro several times,[5] and was one of the few Western journalists to have conducted a videotaped interview with Saddam Hussein since the Persian Gulf War.[6]

In 1991, while employed by NBC, Alpert was the first American journalist to bring back uncensored video footage[7] 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.[8]

Films

  • 1980: Third Avenue: Only the Strong Survive (Director)
  • 1989: One Year in A Life of Crime (Director/Producer)
  • 1991: Rape: Cries from the Heartland (Executive Producer)
  • 1995: High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell (Cinematographer/Producer)
  • 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 (Producer)
  • 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: The Bridge TV Show (Executive Producer/Cinematographer)
  • 2008: Section 60: Arlington National Cemetery (Co-Director/Co-Producer)
  • 2008: Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana (Director/Producer)
  • 2008: A Woman Among Boys (Co-Director/Co-Producer)
  • 2009: China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (Co-Director/Co-Producer)
  • 2012: In Tahrir Square (Co-Director/Co-Producer)
  • 2012: Redemption (Co-Director)

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2012 Oscar Winners | Academy Awards Winners 2012
  3. ↑ Oscars 2013 Winners Predictions of Documentary Short Subject
  4. ↑ http://www.austenriggs.org/erikson-institute-prize-excellence-mental-health-media
  5. ↑ Fidel Up Close: Filmmaker Jon Alpert on His Many Encounters With Castro Over the Past 30 Years
  6. ↑ Exclusive – Democracy Now! Airs Rare Interview With Saddam Hussein Shortly After First Gulf War
  7. ↑ Video | Robert Scheer Interviews Jon Alpert | Link TV
  8. ↑ Project Censored 1991 - Story #1: CBS AND NBC SPIKED FOOTAGE OF IRAQ BOMBING CARNAGE

External links

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