More information
Courtesy of Jon Alpert
Description
VIETNAM – Talking to the people – 1984 by Jon Alpert – 1985
Downtown Community Television Center returns to the war-torn land to locate many of the subjects they filmed eight years before, just after the fall of Saigon. The resulting film, Vietnam: Talking to the People, offers a penetrating view of a country deeply embedded in the American consciousness, and the picture that emerges is one of determination, hardship, humor and resiliency. From a look at Vietnam’s failing birth control program to a journey through the Mekong Delta, from drunken weddings to slow-moving funerals, from pepper pickers to orphans, the film traverses the vast landscape of Vietnam. Highlights include the first entry into an operational Vietnamese prison camp, sealed off from foreign observers for 10 years, as well as an examination of the Orderly Departure Program, in which American officials interview and process the applications of thousands of Vietnamese awaiting visas to the U.S. The final segment follows up with a young Amerasian woman who has left Saigon to find happiness in Ft. Wayne, Indiana.
Jon Alpert has distinguished himself as an award-winning journalist. He has won three Primetime Emmy Awards, eleven News & Documentary Emmy Awards, one National Emmy for Sports Programming, four Columbia DuPont Awards and a Peabody Award. Alpert, a native of Port Chester, N.Y. graduated from Colgate University in 1970. He then spent two years driving a taxi in New York City and held various odd jobs to support what he called his “growing video habit.” In 1972 he and his wife, Keiko Tsuno, started the Downtown Community Television Center, one of the country’s first community media centers.
His journalistic sense led him to hot news spots all over the world. Alpert was the first American TV reporter to enter Cambodia after the Vietnam War. His reports provided the initial documentation of Pol Pot’s genocide and of Cambodia’s impending famine. Making many trips to Vietnam, Alpert produced a continuous stream of exclusive TV reports. He interviewed and helped repatriate the last known American POW, Bobby Garwood. He was the only reporter to gain entry into the “re-education” camps for former South Vietnamese officials. His body of work from Vietnam won two National Emmys, the Overseas Press Club Award, and part of a Peabody Award.
Source: http://www.dctvny.org/about/people/jon-alpert
