News Releases > Albert Alcalay: Self Portraits

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 29, 2008

CONTACT: Meg Fullwood
214-740-9377
mfullwood@kera.org  

 
 

Albert Alcalay: Self Portraits premieres on WGBH / Channel 2
September 9, 2008 at 10:00 p.m.

DALLAS/FORT WORTH -The Boston-based artist Albert Alcalay, who died in March of this year at the age of 90, was an engaging storyteller with a personality as vibrant and colorful as his paintings. Alcalay, who worked out of a third story studio in his Brookline home, was a survivor of the Holocaust. His stories together with the thousands of drawings, paintings and prints produced during a monumentally prolific career reflect a love of life forged during the hardships he endured.
 
The moving story of Alcalay’s journey from concentration camp prisoner to artist and revered Harvard University professor is told in Albert Alcalay: Self Portraits, a one-hour documentary that will receive its Boston television premiere on WGBH Channel 2 on Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 10:00 p.m. The film was made by three former Harvard students, Rob Eustis, Allen Moore and Rob Tranchin, who, thirty years after taking classes with Alcalay, reunited to make a film about their teacher. 
 
Nearly seventy years ago, Albert Alcalay was living in Belgrade, Yugoslavia when World War II broke out. Like many Yugoslavian Jews, Alcalay was forced by the Nazis into hiding and eventually fled to Italy, where he lived on the run as a refugee hunted by fascist sympathizers.  Eventually, Alcalay was captured and sent to a concentration camp, where he was inspired by a fellow prisoner to study painting.  Liberated by the Allies in 1945, Alcalay emigrated to the United States where he lived and worked in the Boston area for nearly 60 years.
 
Albert Alcalay: Self Portraits looks at Alcalay’s artistic development and examines how his painting has been shaped by his experiences as a refugee, his fascination with the American landscape, and by his efforts as an older man to come to terms with his past.  Among the paintings featured is a series that Alcalay created from memory of the mountainous villages in Italy where he and his family were hidden by peasants who risked their lives to save them from the Gestapo. 

“Albert’s life story is fascinating,” says Rob Tranchin, KERA executive producer and one of the program’s co-producers, “and unlike many artists, Albert is very good at showing how human experience gets translated into art and how art communicates this experience to the viewer.”  The result is a master class in the art of living by a man whose legacy is a vast body of work in which, as one critic has said, “lament… is transfigured into praise of life.”

Albert Alcalay: Self Portraits is a co-production of KERA Dallas/Fort Worth and was co-produced by Rob Eustis, Allen Moore and Rob Tranchin. Sylvia Komatsu is Executive in Charge. (See Production Team biographies.) The documentary was made possible by a grant from the Charles Engelhard Foundation and is distributed by American Public Television.

About KERA

KERA is a not-for-profit public broadcasting organization that is independently owned and operated in North Texas. The station’s services include original television and radio productions, national public television and radio programs, online information and resources at www.kera.org and an educational resource center that develops outreach programs for children, families and educators.  

KERA productions have earned the highest accolades bestowed by the broadcasting industry, including Peabody, duPont, Emmy, Clarion (Association of Women in Communications), Gold Camera Award (the U.S. International Film and Video Festival), Texas Gavel (State Bar of Texas), Anson Jones for In-Depth Television (Texas Medical Association), International Health and Medical Award for Community Health, Chicago  International Film Festival's Silver Plaque, Lone Star Emmy, INTERCOM Competition’s Gold Plaque, American Association of Museums’ Gold Muse Award, National Telecommunications and Education Association, and many more. 

About American Public Television (APT)

With more than 10,000 hours of programming in its library, American Public Television (APT) has been a prime source of programming for the nation’s public television stations for 47 years, distributing more than 300 new program titles per year. APT milestones include distribution of the first HD series on public television and the 2006 launch of Create – the TV channel featuring the best of public television's lifestyle programming. Known for its leadership in identifying innovative, worthwhile and viewer-friendly programming, APT has established a tradition of providing public television stations with program choices that strengthen and customize their schedules, such as Carreras Domingo Pavarotti in Concert, Winged Migration, Battlefield Britain, Globe Trekker, Rick Steves' Europe, Great Museums, Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way, America's Test Kitchen From Cook’s Illustrated, Broadway: The Golden Age, Lidia's Family Table, California Dreamin’ – The Songs of The Mamas & the Papas, Rosemary and Thyme, P. Allen Smith's Garden Home, The Big Comfy Couch, Monarchy With David Starkey, and other prominent documentaries, dramatic series, how-to programs, children’s series and classic movies.