Open Space — Season 1, Episode 10: Downtown Video

Episode synopsis

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.

About Open Space

Open Space was a programme produced by the BBC's Community Programme Unit. It was an evolution of the earlier Open Door series of programmes allowing minority points of view to make a television programme about issues of concern to them. The programmes were transmitted on BBC 2 in a mid-evening slot and would attract audiences between 500,000 and 1,500,000. In a typical year there would be two or three groups of up to eight Open Space programmes each usually half an hour long. A producer, an assistant and a budget of up to £25,000 would be allocated to each programme.

More episodes from Season 1

• E1Power in Your Hands
• E2Time and Other Thieves
• E3Christine's Children
• E4Chingari - The Spark
• E5National Health Service: 1: the Consultant's Tale
• E6National Health Service: 2: Mission of Mersey
• E7National Health Service: 3: On Whose Authority?
• E8A Day Off the Buses
• E9Ducking the Rocks - A Social Worker's Life
• E11Health Care: Your Money or Your Life
• E12A Healthy Future?
• E13A Midsummer Night’s Belfast