Jon Alpert

Jon Alpert

Still: Life of Crime 1984-2020
Jon ALPERT (1948, US) is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. He has won 16 National Emmy Awards for his films, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards. As an investigative journalist, Alpert has traveled widely and has reported from Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Cuba, China, and Afghanistan. In 1972, together with his partner Keiko Tsuno, Alpert founded the Downtown Community Television Center in New York, one of America’s oldest and most honoured community media centers. His film Cuba and the Cameraman (2017) premiered at the Venice Film Festival. He has broken almost every bone in his body pursuing his 'hobbies' ... karate, hockey and getting bucked off horses. Life of Crime 1984-2020 (2021) – world premiere in Venice and released by HBO – is an intimate cinema vérité documentary exploring the heartbreaking and often violent world of drug addiction and crime in Newark, New Jersey. The thirty-six-year-long chronicle follows three people who struggled with addiction and with whom Alpert became friends: Rob, Freddie, and Deliris.

Filmography

(selection, all doc) Cuba the People (1974, TV doc), Chinatown Immigrants in America (1976, TV), Third Avenue: Only the Strong Survive (1980, TV), Vietnam: Picking up the Pieces (1978), Vietnam: Talking to the People (1985), Junkie Junior (1987, TV), Vietnam: When Will The Hard Times End (1988), South Korea: Victims of Progress (1988), A Short Spring In China (1989), Lock-Up: The Prisoners of Rikers Island (1989), Vietnam (1990), Listen Saddam (1993, TV), High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell (1994, TV), Life of Crime 2 (1997, TV), A Cinderella Season: The Lady Vols Fight Back (1998, TV), Papa (1999), How Geraldo Lost His Job (2000, TV), Campaign Confidential (2001, TV), Speak Up New York (2002), Afghanistan: From Ground Zero to Ground Zero (2002, TV), To Have and Have Not (2002), Bridge to Baghdad (2003, TV), Bridge to Baghdad II (2003, TV), Angola: Fire and Ashes at the Front (2003), Main Street USA (2003, TV), The Last Cowboy (1980-2005), Venezuela: Revolution in Progress (2005, TV), Baghdad ER (2005, TV), Dirty Driving: Thundercars of Indiana (2008, TV), A Woman Among Boys (2008), China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (2008, TV), In Tahrir Square: 18 Days of Egypt's Unfinished Revolution (2010, short), Redemption (2012, short, co-dir), The Latin Explosion: A New America (2014, TV), Mariela Castro's March (2015, short), Rock and a Hard Place (2016, TV), Cuba and the Cameraman (2017), Life of Crime 1984-2020 (2021)

More info: Wikipedia, Jon Alpert