Jon Alpert

With more than 50 million Latinos now living in the United States, Latinos are taking their seat at the table as the new American power brokers in the world of entertainment, business, politics and the arts. As Latinos’ influence in American society has soared, they have entered mainstream American culture, and the proof is in the music. Executive produced by legendary music mogul Tommy Mottola, THE LATIN EXPLOSION: A NEW AMERICA features a dazzling array of artists at the center of Latino cultural power and influence, including Marc Anthony, Emilio Estefan Jr., Gloria Estefan, José Feliciano, Eva Longoria, George Lopez, Jennifer Lopez, Los Lobos, Cheech Marin, Ricky Martin, Rita Moreno, Pitbull, Romeo Santos, Shakira, Thalía and Sofía Vergara. Narrated by John Leguizamo.

Open details →

Redemption is a documentary about New York City's canners - the men and women who survive by redeeming bottles and cans they collect from curbs, garbage cans and apartment complexes. You've seen them combing through the trash, but never got to meet them. The film is an unexpected and intimate look at post-industrial gleaners, struggling at the edge of our society.

Open details →

With footage shot in the center of Egypt's Tahrir Square from the beginning of the battles to the climax of the celebration, audiences experience first-hand the people-powered revolt that brought down a dictator and changed Egypt forever.

Open details →

With suicide rates among active military servicemen and veterans currently on the rise, this documentary brings urgent attention to the invisible wounds of war. Drawing on personal stories of American soldiers whose lives and psyches were torn asunder by the horrors of battle and PTSD, the documentary chronicles the lingering effects of combat stress and post-traumatic stress on military personnel and their families throughout American history, from the Civil War through today's conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Open details →

Follows the struggle of 138 mostly immigrant workers who strike to save their jobs at a famous bakery in the Bronx when a private equity firm buys the bakery and demands wage cuts of up to 30%.

Open details →

On May 12, 2008, a catastrophic earthquake hit Sichuan Province in rural China, killing nearly 70,000 people, including 10,000 children. In town after town, poorly constructed school buildings crumbled, wiping out classrooms filled with students, most of them their parents' only child. But when grieving mothers and fathers sought explanations and justice, they found their path blocked by incompetence, corruption and empty promises.

Open details →

Auto racing is an obsession in Anderson, Indiana. Even with local auto factories closing down and jobs being lost, the town's residents continue to flock to the local speedway every Friday night--and its drivers continue to pour their dwindling resources into their Thundercars. Emmy(R)-winning filmmaker Jon Alpert presents this look at this passion for racing in rust-belt America. Since the closing of a GM plant and the loss of 33,000 jobs, the once-thriving town of Anderson now stands witness to empty factories, shuttered stores and abandoned home--but also to packed houses at Anderson Speedway where people put their troubles on hold to watch the cacophony of screeching tires and crashing metal as drivers vie for Thundercar supremacy.

Open details →

This documentary chronicles Ruth Lovelace, the first woman to coach the boys' basketball team at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. The once highly accomplished and storied basketball program had fallen apart before Lovelace took over as head coach in 1994 at the age of 24. But Lovelace restored basketball excellence, leading the team to 13 straight playoff appearances.

Open details →

When Diana Levine went to the hospital in April 2000 seeking relief for a severe migraine headache, the professional musician and children's record producer never imagined that faulty drug labeling would result in the amputation of her arm. Today she is at the center of a closely-watched Supreme Court case and a national debate about the federal courts and corporate accountability.

Open details →

It has been called "the saddest acre in America." It is also one of the most sacred. Section 60 in Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for young men and women who died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. This emotional documentary filmed entirely in Section 60 provides intimate glimpses of family and friends who have come to honor their loved ones.

Open details →

In a war that has left more than 25,000 wounded, ALIVE DAY MEMORIES: HOME FROM IRAQ looks at a new generation of veterans. Executive Producer James Gandolfini interviews ten Soldiers and Marines who reveal their feelings on their future, their severe disabilities and their devotion to America. The documentary surveys the physical and emotional cost of war through memories of their "alive day," the day they narrowly escaped death in Iraq.

Open details →

Documentary on Antonio "King Tone" Fernandez and his gang, the Latin Kings, whose main target was to protect Latin people.

Open details →

Assembled by some of the nation's top documentary filmmakers, this centerpiece film in HBO's 'Addiction' campaign features insights from experts on trends and treatments in the ongoing battle against drug and alcohol abuse. This documentary consists of nine segments that focus on case studies and cutting-edge treatments that challenge traditional beliefs about addiction.

Open details →

Produced and directed by 11-time Emmy Award-winner Jon Alpert, this 64-minute verite documentary takes an unforgettable look inside the 86th Combat Support Hospital (CSH), the U.S. Army's premier medical facility in Iraq and former site of one of Saddam Hussein?s elite medical facilities. Shot over two months in the summer of 2005, the film puts a human face on the war's cold casualty statistics, as doctors and nurses fight to save the lives of wounded soldiers who are Medevaced (helicoptered) in a numbingly routine basis.

Open details →

Filmed over two decades in the life of Vern Sager and his family, The Last Cowboy captures a family's struggle to preserve a vanishing way of life as cowboys and Indians in the Badlands of South Dakota.

Open details →

Days after the U.S. declared the war officially over, Next Next Entertainment and DCTV sent a crew to a now smoldering Baghdad to rediscover the young Iraqis. While the American teenagers waited anxiously stateside for phone calls and emails that never came, the Iraqi youth were emerging to begin their adult lives in a strange new world. Bridge to Baghdad II allows these two groups to resume the conversation that was cut short by a war.

Open details →

Open details →

Afghanistan: From Ground Zero to Ground Zero is the story of Masuda Sultan, a 23-year-old Afghan-American woman who travels back to Kandahar, Afghanistan to see what has become of her country. Masuda is delighted to see the yoke of the Taliban lifted, but horrified to find out what happened to her family. Seeking refuge from the American bombing, a large number of her family escaped to the small village of Chowkar-karez, 60 miles north of Kandahar. On October 22, 2001 Chowkar-Karez was attacked by the American military. 41 civilians were killed. 19 of them were members of Masuda's family. Masuda, who supports America's effort against terrorism, wants to know why her family had to die in the desert.

Open details →

Filmmaker Jon Alpert turns the camera on his own family in this intimate portrait of his aging father. As illness and declining vitality reshape his life, the film captures a deeply personal struggle with dignity, humor, and the bonds that hold a family together.

Open details →

This follow-up to the 1989 documentary ONE YEAR IN A LIFE OF CRIME revisits three of the original subjects in New Jersey during a five-year period in the 1990s. We share in their triumphs and setbacks as they navigate lives of poverty, drug abuse, AIDS, and petty crime.

Open details →

The University of Tennessee lady volunteer basketball team is followed during their 1996 season.

Open details →

Documents 18 months in the lives of three crack addicts in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Open details →

If you're arrested in New York City and can't make bail, you'll be sent to Rikers Island -- a mammoth holding facility for 17,000 men and women awaiting trial. TV journalist Jon Alpert spent ten months filming there, coming away with a graphic and unblinking portrait of life inside America's largest jail complex, including a moving look at the human faces behind the statistics.

Open details →

Their job is stealing, their lives a cruel dead end. Director Jon Alpert takes his cameras undercover for this hard-hitting look at men who live by theft and suffer addiction. Focusing on a year in the lives of three professional criminals, this gritty profile—which includes hidden-camera footage of actual thefts—exposes the "petty" crimes that are paralyzing America.

Open details →

A five-year portrait of Junior Rios' descent into the black hole of drug addiction which will ultimately cost him everything.

Open details →

During the upheaval surrounding the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, filmmaker Jon Alpert travels across the Philippines documenting everyday life amid political crisis. Through encounters with citizens from all walks of life, the film reveals the stark inequalities and tensions shaping a nation on the brink of revolution.

Open details →

Examines "hard metals disease," cobalt poisoning among workers in the tungsten carbide machine tool industry. Alpert focuses on workers suffering from this debilitating, incurable lung disease who were exposed to cobalt dust at three plants of the Valenite Metals Corporation. Establishing a close rapport with the workers as they tell their own stories of Valenite's negligence and subsequent cover-up, Alpert departs from standard television reportage in his powerful and unapologetic indictment of industry.

Open details →

The stories of six "ordinary" people who live or work along New York City's Third Avenue, which runs for sixteen miles through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, cutting through the complex social strata of the city to reveal wildly different economic and ethnic subcultures.

Open details →

Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno made headlines with a 1977 journalistic coup when they became the first American television crew allowed back into Vietnam after the U.S. withdrawal and were given unprecedented access to the ruined countryside and its people. The resulting "up-close" study of Vietnam's grim post war reality relies on the voices of the common people to tell their stories.

Open details →

Produced by DCTV in response to what its makers saw as distorted media portrayals of New York City’s Chinatown, "Chinatown: Immigrants in America" (1976) offers an unvarnished portrait of an immigrant community confronting poverty, labor exploitation, and cultural displacement. Directed by Jon Alpert and Yoko Maruyama, the film documents restaurant, garment, and service workers enduring low wages and unsafe conditions while struggling to build lives in America.

Open details →