Jon Alpert’s keynote is the full version of his chapter in the book and includes clips from some of his works. (Look for cameo appearances by Christine Choy in Part Three and by Tami Gold in the Q&A!)
Jon Alpert is a journalist and documentary filmmaker known for his use of cinema verite. Alpert has traveled widely as an investigative journalist and 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 two Academy awards: in 2010 for China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province, and in 2012 for Redemption. Alpert has reported from Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Cuba, China, and Afghanistan. He has interviewed Fidel Castro several times and was one of the few Western journalists to have conducted a videotaped interview with Saddam Hussein since the Persian Gulf War. While employed by NBC, Alpert was the first American journalist to bring back uncensored video footage from the first Persian Gulf War. The footage, much of it focusing on civilian casualties, was canceled three hours before it was supposed to be aired, and Alpert was simultaneously fired. In 1972, Alpert and his wife, Keiko Tsuno, founded the Downtown Community Television Center, one of the country’s first community media centers.