Full Frame to Honor Durham Educator and Festival Advisor Alan Teasley with 2016 Advocate Award

    Alan Teasley headshot at Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University
    Alan Teasley headshot at Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University

    Durham, N.C.March 22, 2016 – The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival has announced that its 2016 Advocate Award will be presented to Durham native Alan B. Teasley, longtime supporter and advisor of the festival. Teasley serves as a Full Frame selection committee member, First Team donor, educator for Full Frame’s Teach the Teacher’s program, and a board member at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies, of which Full Frame is a program. Full Frame’s Director, Deirdre Haj, presents the Full Frame Advocate Award in recognition of individuals who have supported the documentary medium and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Teasley will receive this honor at the festival’s Champagne Reception on Thursday, April 7.

    Previous recipients of the Advocate Award are Josh Braun, co-president of Submarine Entertainment; Jim Goodmon and Michael Goodmon, President and Vice President of Capitol Broadcasting Company; Molly Thompson, President of A&E IndieFilms; and longtime Full Frame advisor Wyndham Robertson.

    “No other individual impacts Full Frame in as many ways as Alan Teasley. His passion for documentary film and education is unparalleled,” said Haj. “When the free educational programming that Full Frame provides was merely an idea, Alan was the first person to not only say it was a smart thing to do, he put all of his expertise and considerable personal effort behind it. Quite simply, without Alan Teasley, Full Frame would not be the resource to our community that it is today.”

    Teasley was instrumental in developing Full Frame’s free Teach the Teachers workshop which provides public school teachers with festival passes and strategies for utilizing documentary film within their curricula. He co-designed the program with festival director Deirdre Haj and led the first class of teachers in 2011. Full Frame will welcome the sixth group of Teach the Teachers educators to the 2016 festival. Teasley has volunteered as a member of Full Frame’s selection committee since 2003, and he estimates he has seen over fifteen hundred documentary films. Teasley has also served as a member of the Board of Directors at the Center for Documentary Studies since 1999.

    “When I first heard that the Center for Documentary Studies was going to host a documentary film festival, I went straight to [then] director Iris Tillman Hill and said, ‘I want to be involved,’” stated Teasley. “I have attended every day of every festival. I have been thrilled to see new work from both legendary and first-time filmmakers. I have often said that Full Frame is the greatest source of ‘lifelong learning’ I have—a view shared by many of the filmgoers I talk to while in line. In addition to serving on the selection committee, I’ve gotten the most pleasure from attending the festival with the educators in the Teach the Teachers program and hearing how they plan to use particular films with their students.”

    Teasley holds B.A., M.A.T., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Duke University’s Master of Arts in Teaching program, where has has taught courses in effective teaching strategies, methods of teaching English, and world literature. He served as director of this program from 2012-2015. Teasley spent most of his professional career in the Durham Public School system, first as a high school English and drama teacher, and later as central office coordinator of secondary curriculum, professional development, and grants administrations.

    Teasley has presented workshops on using media in the classroom at conferences hosted by the National Council of Teachers of English, the North Carolina English Teachers Association, and the Annenberg School for Communication, among others. He is the co-author of Reel Conversations: Reading Films with Young Adults, a book for middle and high school English teachers. His articles on using film in the classroom have appeared in English JournalThe Iowa English BulletinMedia and Methods, and Telemedium. He also co-authored the article “Reading Reel Nonfiction: Documentary Films for Young Adults,” which featured teaching ideas about several of the films he had seen at Full Frame.

    “I am particularly thrilled that all this happens in my home town,” Teasley added. “As a young adult, I used to think that in order to see or do or be anything special in the film world, I’d have to move somewhere else, probably Los Angeles or New York. But now, for a few days each year, the film world comes to Durham, and I’m glad to do my part in making it so.”

    The 19th Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival will be held April 7–10, 2016, in Durham, N.C., with Duke University as the presenting sponsor. The complete schedule of films is now online. Individual tickets go on sale April 1, and can be purchased online at http://www.fullframefest.org.