Jon Alpert & Matthew O'Neill

Finalists, the Rory Peck Award for Features 2006

American
Shot: Iraq, 25 May – 15 July 2005
Downtown Community Television Centre for HBO

"This film demonstrates alert, sympathetic and compassionate camerawork. This is an emotional and powerful piece of television.”
Judge's Comment
 
The film shows horror and heroism on display in Iraq’s busiest trauma centre. For six weeks Jon and Matt were embedded with the US Army’s 86th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad. They flew on countless helicopter rescue missions and patrolled the streets of Baghdad – but both say their most difficult times were in the hospital.

Biographies
Jon Alpert has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and eleven News and Documentary Emmy Awards. Over the past thirty years, he has consistently gained access to behind the scenes events of historical significance and interviewed world leaders when other reporters were not allowed in. He is the co-founder of the Downtown Community Television Centre, the United States’ largest, most honoured non-profit community media centre, in New York City’s Chinatown.

Matthew O’Neill is a video journalist who has spent his career filming and producing documentaries for PBS, the Discovery Channel and HBO. His work has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and five New York Emmy Awards as well as a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Public Service Television Journalism.