Downtown Video

Cameraman, director, interviewer Jon Alpert is the only 'Independent' whose work appears regularly - and unedited - on American network television, on NBC's prestigious Today programme. The unique quality of his reporting, whether it's on squatters in Philadelphia, or guerrillas in El Salvador, comes from a technique he learnt on the streets of his local community in New York where he and his wife Keiko Tsuno have run Downtown Community Television since 1972. They hold free classes for anyone interested in using video as a community resource, and lend equipment to their ' graduates ' who include tenants' associations, trade unions pressure groups of all kinds and high school students, and whose tapes are shown on the streets, in meeting-halls, in private homes, in schools and on local cable television.