Junkie Junior
Junior Rios started using heroin when he was 15. Now 29 and the father of three children, Junior's habit costs $200 a day. When he isn't getting high, he is climbing over rooftops and through the burned-out buildings of the South Bronx, stealing what other thieves have overlooked to keep his habit going. His meager diet consists of coffee-soaked bread.
Jon Alpert
Also Directed by Jon Alpert
This revealing portrait of Cuba follows the lives of Fidel Castro and three Cuban families affected by his policies over the last four decades.
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.
A rare look inside Cuba’s LGBT community, this compelling film follows the efforts of Mariela Castro, daughter of President Raúl Castro, as she champions LGBT social reforms and acceptance of diversity.
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.
Documentary about the Rikers Island prison. 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.
This Emmy Award-winning documentary tells 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. The subjects speak for themselves, offering candid glimpses into the disparate worlds of a junkyard dealer who steals cars, a Bowery bum and the wife he abandoned, a welfare mother living in a condemned building with her five children, a male prostitute, a devout Puerto Rican factory worker, and an aging Italian barber and his wife. Called "a triumph of its kind" by The Washington Post, this unsentimental portrait of the uncommon lives of common people is a subjective sociological study of survival in urban America.
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.
This is Jon Alpert's portrait of his father's struggles with growing old and nearing the end of life.
A look at the distressing circumstances for millions of children living in orphanages and other institutions around the world as J.K. Rowling's LUMOS foundation works to reunite them with family members or place them in foster homes.
People with disabilities are the largest minority in the United States (57 million people) and in Russia (13 million people). This film follows the adventures of Russians and Americans with disabilities, who like the characters in the Dumas novel, work together for the common good… but they wield cameras not sabers. They make films to empower themselves, educate the public, create more opportunities, and build friendship between the people of Russia and the United States.