Directed by Jon Alpert • Documentary • 1980 • 60 minutes
This Emmy Award-winning documentary tells the stories of six "ordinary" people who live or work along New York City's Third Avenue, which runs for sixteen miles through Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, cutting through the complex social strata of the city to reveal wildly different economic and ethnic subcultures. Called "a triumph of its kind" by The Washington Post, this unsentimental portrait of the uncommon lives of common people is a subjective sociological study of survival in urban America. THIRD AVENUE: ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE is a DCTV and WNET/Thirteen production, co-produced by Jon Alpert and Keiko Tsuno. Associate Producers, Victor Sanchez, Karen Ranucci, Eddie Pabon, Maryann DeLeo, Kathii Chen.
"A classic work of direct, reportorial cinema that reaches deep beneath its surfaces to provide a keen analysis of systemic social disorders." —Richard Brody, The New Yorker
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