The Downtown Community Television Center or DCTV is a community media center located Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood. It was founded in 1972 by documentary filmmaker Jon Alpert and his wife, Keiko Tsuno.
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Mission
According to their Web site[1], DCTV "introduc[es] members of the community to the basics of electronic media through hundreds of free or low-cost production courses and access to broadcast-quality production equipment." DCTV conducts classes enabling people from less privileged backgrounds to learn to create video productions and operates studios available to them for low cost. These programs are funded in part by earnings from DCTV's own documentary films which have won 15 national Emmy awards and many other honors.
Facilities
DCTV is based in a historic firehouse on Lafayette Street in Manhattan, constructed in 1895 and purchased by DCTV in the 1980s.[2] The radio program Democracy Now! also operates out of the firehouse.
Films
Some of DCTV's recent films include:
- 2005 - Bullets in the Hood: A Bed-Stuy Story[3], produced by Bedford-Stuyvesant resident and DCTV student Terrence Fisher whose friend was shot by a police officer while he was in the process of producing a documentary about gun violence.
- 2005 - Venezuela: Revolution in Progress[4], about the recall election for President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela
- 2006 - Baghdad ER[5], showing the lives of the 86th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq as they work to save the lives of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis, and the winner of four Emmy awards.
