THE RORY PECK AWARDS 2006
Sponsored by Sony

JON ALPERT AND MATTHEW O’NEILL - American

Baghdad ER

Finalists: The Rory Peck Award for Features

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.

Cameraman's Comment

Jon says: “In the first two days we witnessed four or five amputations. You focus on doing your job and making sure you’re holding your camera straight and recording properly, but you’ve got to be made out of bricks and cement not to be affected.”

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.

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