A native of Port Chester, New York, Jonathan B. Alpert is a 1970 graduate of Colgate University,[1] and has a 4th degree black belt in karate.[2] In fact he once won the North American team-kumite Karate Championship despite fighting with three broken ribs.
In 1972, Alpert and his wife, Keiko Tsuno, founded the non-profit organization, Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV), one of the country's first community media centers. DCTV is housed in a landmark firehouse in New York City. DCTV's programs have trained more than 70,000 people over the course of its 50-year history,[8] most of them members of low-income and minority communities. DCTV offers over 150 low-cost video and electronic media training workshops a year.[9] The most accomplished of their students are DCTV's High School Media Fellows. They have won local Emmy Awards, the Sundance Film Festival jury prize, and the R.F.K. Journalism award.[10]
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.[11] Jon Alpert ended up interviewing Fidel Castro several times.[12] Over the years, Alpert repeatedly visited Cuba, and his footage from 45 years of filming in Cuba came together in the 2017 Netflix documentary, Cuba and the Cameraman, which provides a look at the revolution and Cuba's recent history through the eyes of 3 Cuban families and Fidel Castro.[13]
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.[14]
In 1991, while employed by NBC, Alpert was the first American journalist to bring back uncensored video footage[15] 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 fired soon after. Later that year, CBS Evening News Executive Producer Tom Bettag planned to air the footage but this airing was also cancelled, and Bettag was fired.[16] Jon Alpert was one of the few Western journalists to have conducted a videotaped interview with Saddam Hussein since the Persian Gulf War.[17]
Alpert has been nominated for an Oscar award on two occasions, once in 2010 for Documentary short, China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province (HBO)[18] and again in 2013 for Redemption (HBO).[19]
In 2021, HBO Max debut Alpert's Life of Crime: 1984-2020 documentary, a thirty-six year chronicle of criminal and drug addicts in Newark, New Jersey.[20] It was nominated for a 2021 Peabody Award,[21] won a National News & Documentary Emmy in the category of Outstanding Crime and Justice Documentary [22] and won the Venice Film Festival "Ambassador of Hope" award.[23]
In 2022 Alpert's non-profit DCTV opened the Firehouse Cinema, one of the few documentary centric cinemas in the world. The theater features first run, curated, repertory, masterclasses and family programs.[24]
Alpert has broken almost every bone in his body pursuing his hobbies of playing hockey, doing karate and getting bucked off horses.[25]
Films
1974: Cuba: The People
1976: Chinatown: Immigrants in America (co-producer)[26]
1977: Vietnam: Picking up the Pieces (Co-director/Co-producer)[27]
