This new documentary reflects the extraordinary life and engaging personality of former Harvard faculty member Albert Alcalay through a first-person look at his development as an artist.

Forced into a life of hiding as a Serbian Jew hunted by Nazis in Fascist Italy during World War II, Alcalay was eventually captured and sent to a concentration camp, where he was inspired by a fellow prisoner to study painting. After the war, he emigrated to the United States, where he has lived and worked in Boston since. 

Self-Portraits examines the ways in which Alcalay’s artistic language has been shaped by the American landscape, by memory, and by loss. It is an artistic biography of a man who, although well into his eighties and dealing with the effects of macular degeneration, continues to paint vibrant landscapes in which “lament… is transfigured into praise of life.”