Saturday, May 8, 12:30 PM, The Hall at Brown Center

Director: Allen Moore and Rob Tranchin

Cast: Albert Alcalay

Country: U.S.
Year: 2004
Running Time:56 minutes
Format: Beta SP

Artist and teacher Albert Alcalay gives a first person account of his life and his art in this inspiring documentary. As a Serbian Jew, he was forced into hiding in Fascist Italy during World War II before he was captured and sent to a concentration camp. It was there that he was encouraged by a fellow prisoner to study painting. After the war, he immigrated to the United State where he has lived and worked in Boston ever since, including serving as a distinguished professor of painting and design in the visual arts program at Harvard University.

In Self Portraits, Alcalay reflects upon his life and his art. He provides insight into how his painting evolved over his lifetime and how it reflected his surrounding and events in his life. Largely an expressionist in the Italian countryside, his art was profoundly affected when he came to America and discovered skyscrapers and jazz.

Through interviews and generous visual explorations of Alcalay’s paintings, Self Portraits, provides a look at a life and artistic career intertwined. Now in his eighties and suffering from several ailments, including macular degeneration, Alcalay still shows the artistic spark and desire to create that drives him to make the arduous climb to his studio.

-- Dan Krovich

Preceded by:
THE PUPPETEER - Gary Henoch & Chris Schmidt (36:00)

This documentary captures the art of Igor Fokin, an extraordinarily talented artist and performer whose stage was a street corner in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When Igor arrived in America from the stifling artistic confines of the former Soviet Union, he spoke very little English, had few resources and no job prospects. Formally trained by the last surviving master of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Marionette Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, he was finally free to pursue his passion. However, his only available venue was the open-air theater of the street. With the tilt of a wrist and the flick of a finger, Igor magically breathed life into each of his hand-carved marionettes, captivating the imagination of both adults and children. He became successful almost immediately. He believed that each hand-crafted puppet had it’s own unique character, and that the strings served only to stop his creations from running away.

Allen Moore graduated from Harvard University in the Visual Arts Program, where his senior thesis film, Humus, was graded Summa Cum Laude. He has since made several long and short documentaries including The Shepherds of Berneray, Food on Hand, Black Water, A Sheepherder’s Homecoming, and The Pursuit of Truth: 200 Years at Middlebury College, picking up many awards along the way. He also served as director of photography for several of Ken Burns’ historical films, including The Civil War, Thomas Jefferson, and Baseball. He has received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for cinematography – one for Ken Burns’ Baseball and one for Ric Burns’ American Experience series New York.

Rob Tranchin graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University and holds an M.A. in Cinema Studies from New York University. He is currently a senior producer, writer and director of documentaries and outreach specials for KERA. Most recently he wrote, produced, and directed Roy Bedichek’s Vanishing Frontier that aired nationally on PBS in April 2003. Other national PBS productions include Wildcatter (for “The American Experience”), Who Cares about Kids? (with Maya Angelou), For a Deaf Son, and Peacemaker. In 1999 Tranchin won a national Emmy Award as writer and co-producer of the four part series The U.S.-Mexican War (1846-1848) and in 2000 he was nominated for another national Emmy for Matisse & Picasso.