This filmmaker is the new director of programming at the Coral Gables Art Cinema
As a child growing up in the remote farm community of Hale County, Alabama, April Dobbins didn’t get to go to the movies much. The theaters were just too far away.
“We didn’t even have cable,” Dobbins, 44, said. “My mom just got internet on the farm this year. The one thing we did have was TV. We would always watch Sunday afternoon movies, like Clint Eastwood films and 1973’s ‘Westworld.’ That’s where I first started thinking about film as a portal to other places.”
Flash-forward three decades. Today, Dobbins holds two master’s degrees — in motion pictures and international relations — and is working on a third, in arts in education, from Harvard. She is an accomplished filmmaker, the recipient of a Sundance Institute Knight Fellowship and a Sundance Documentary Fund award, working on a feature-length documentary called “Alabamaland,” about Black land ownership and American farms.
Now, she is also the new director of programming at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, one of Miami’s most popular art-house theaters, which is preparing to expand with a second screen in 2022. Dobbins is the first Black woman to hold that position at any movie theater in South Florida.
“I’ve thought about so many things,” Dobbins said about her plans for the 141-seat venue, which is located at 260 Aragon Ave. “I’ve been a regular [at the cinema]. It’s one of my happy places. I’m also the kind of person who likes to come in and learn and listen. The important thing is not to alienate our existing core audience based on my programming.
“But I have things that also excite me,” she added. “I love short films, which allow you to see who filmmakers are at their core before they move on to bigger things. You can actually see who they are and what they aim to do. The cinema already has a lot of programming that reaches out to communities, like family and children’s programming. I would like to expand into new communities and having a second screen will allow us to grow that audience.”
Dobbins replaces Miami Film Festival co-founder Nat Chediak, who was lured out of retirement seven years ago by his longtime friend Steven Krams, the cinema’s founder, to program the theater. When Krams announced this August that he was stepping away from the day-to-day operations of the cinema, Chediak followed suit.
Javier Chavez, who had worked as the cinema’s associate director, also left in August for a job programming the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Maryland.
That’s when Coral Gables Art Cinema executive director Brenda Moe began the hunt for a new director of programming.
“I wanted a partner who would bring vision to the role and could fill a senior management position,” Moe said. “We did a national search, but I emailed April and told her ‘It would be a huge oversight if I didn’t talk to you about it.’ Having listened in on April’s Q&A moderation at the theater after a screening of ‘Test Pattern’ [a drama about an interracial couple] and being familiar with her work in Miami, I felt something really special about her. I am ecstatic.”
Moe said she received 50 applications in total and that she met with five applicants. She said there were three final candidates for the job, but that her focus was always on Dobbins.
A leap of faith
Dobbins moved to Miami in 2012 to work as a writer for the Advancement Office at the University of Miami. She was later promoted to director of prestigious awards and fellowships in the Office of Academic Enhancement, where she connected students with opportunities such as the Rhodes Scholarship and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. She also created an original course in the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media to help students understand the process of scholarship, grant and award-funding applications.
“I was working at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa as a writer and was ranting and raving about my trip to Lisbon, where there were beautiful palm trees everywhere, and how I would love to live there,” Dobbins said. “One of my mentors at the school asked me, ‘Have you ever thought about Miami?’ She said if you want to live someplace where it feels like you’re living outside the country but you get all the benefits of living in the U.S., Miami would be the place.
“I had to uproot my daughter, who was seven at the time, and move to a place where I had no family or friends,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect. But I found a home here that I hadn’t been able to find anywhere else. That’s not to say that Miami doesn’t have issues. But when I walk into a space, even if I’m the only Black person there, I still feel seen.”
Today, Dobbins’ daughter is 17 years old and attending the New World School of the Arts.
“There have been these times in my life when I’ve had to take these leaps of faith and I ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’” Dobbins said. “But I’ve always been involved in the arts in whichever community I was living, and I’m happy to be able to continue doing that here.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
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