About this hub
Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV) is one of the oldest and most historically significant community media organizations in the United States, founded in 1972 by Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno in New York City's Chinatown neighborhood, where it began using video to bring local residents together to address community problems.
Now based in a landmarked 1895 firehouse at 87 Lafayette Street in Manhattan, DCTV operates as a documentary production and film education center with a mission to catalyze, inform, and empower communities through filmmaking. The organization has produced award-winning documentaries recognized with 18 National Emmy Awards and two Academy Award nominations, trains approximately 15,000 people annually through youth media programs and continuing education, and in 2022 opened Firehouse Cinema as a documentary-only art house movie theater. DCTV made history in 1974 as the first American television crew invited to Cuba since the 1959 revolution, and has produced an extensive body of social-issue documentary work.
New York filmmakers and media makers across all backgrounds know DCTV as a place where documentary storytelling is both taught and practiced - a downtown institution where community video, social justice journalism, and the independent documentary tradition have been sustained for more than five decades.
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