APT DOCUMENTARY WINS SAN FRANCISCO FILM FESTIVAL

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., March 2006 – “Thornton Dial,” a documentary produced and directed by Alabama Public Television’s Celia Carey, has won The Golden Gate Award for Best TV Documentary Short Form at the 2006 San Francisco International Film Festival. The film was funded by Alabama Power and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

 “Thornton Dial,” examines the extraordinary life and work of this 77-year-old contemporary artist from Bessemer, Alabama, which is sixteen miles south of Birmingham.  

Born in Emelle, Alabama — in the heart of the Black Belt—Dial is a former migrant farmer and steel worker who neither reads nor writes, and has never formally trained as an artist.  Yet art critics call him genius.  Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times hailed him as one of the most “preternaturally gifted” living artists in America.    The film also explores Southern African-American improvisational visual art—the underrated sibling of jazz, the blues and gospel. 

"Art is strange-looking stuff and most people don’t understand art,” Mr. Dial says. “Most people don’t understand my art, the art of Negroes; because most people don’t understand me, don’t understand the Negroes at all.  If everybody understand one another, wouldn’t nobody make art.  Art is something to open your eyes.  Art is for understanding.”

“It ain’t about paint. It ain’t about canvas,” Dial says. “It’s about ideas. Too many people died without ever getting their mind out to the world. I have found how to get my ideas out and I won’t stop. I got ten thousand left.”

Birmingham native filmmakers Celia Carey earned a master’s degree in 1997 from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.  She spent 15 years traveling the globe for National Geographic, Discovery, PBS, BBC, and several other media outlets before joining APT as its executive director of documentary productions.  She joined APT in 2003 as managing director of documentary productions.

The Golden Gate award for “Thornton Dial” is the second high honor Carey has won for her work at Alabama Public Television (APT); “The Quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend,” her first documentary for APT, received a regional Emmy in 2005.

“We are delighted to have Celia and her work honored in this way. Our mission is to be Alabama’s storyteller and educational resource,” noted APT Executive Director Allan Pizzato. “Thornton Dial” is a success story on both fronts.”

About the San Francisco International Film Festival

The 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, the oldest and one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, will be held April 20 through May 4, 2006, culminating in the Golden Gate Awards Ceremony. The Festival is presented by The San Francisco Film Society, whose mission is to embrace the art, technology and innovation of the worlds’ most imaginative storytellers who use the moving image to celebrate humanity while education, entertaining and enriching the audiences of the world.  The Advisory Board includes well-respected industry professionals such as Robert Altman, Danny Glover, Dustin Hoffman, and Clint Eastwood.  For more information on the festival see their Web site at: www.sffs.org