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Cinéma vérité. Jon Alpert Advises Armenian Collegues to Fight for Peace

“I shot a clip and it was like a miracle. That’s how I became a journalist – displaying problems of the society,” says Jon Alpert, American journalist and documentary filmmaker, who met students of journalism department of Yerevan State Linguistic University after V. Brusov on October 13.

Jon Alpert, who had a chance to interview Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro in the course of his career, visited Armenia in the frames of Internews’s “Alternative Resources in Media” program and with the financial support of USAID.

The experienced reporter told the future journalists dangerous, amusing and exciting episodes of his life and presented some of his videos which were once shown on NBC, PBS and HBO.

“I didn’t study journalism. It’s the same when they say you must become a doctor and put a knife in your hand. In my case it was a camera,” says Jon. He used to be a taxi driver and never intended to become a journalist. But when Alpert first took a camera in his hands he realized that this thing was going to become a part of his life.

Vietnam, Cuba, USSR, China, Nicaragua, Philippines, Korea: this is not the full list of the countries that Alpert visited with his cam when a historical event took place. As a result, he received 15 Emmy and 3 duPont-Columbia awards for his documentaries.

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