LA Alfonso
I'm best known as a nonfiction filmmaker, but I'm also a multi-media experimental artist (among other things.) Awakened to the power of moving images by Steven Spielberg's Jaws as a kid, I was transformed by Chris Marker's Sans Soleil when I saw it as a film student at York University. I also construct site-specific multi-media installations for festivals and performances, including circus performances at Market Hall. I produced large-scale architectural video-mapping projects that included transforming the Peterborough Library into an "Imaginarium" for Artsweek in 2018. I performed a live film mix with the Rolston String Quartet at Harbourfront in Toronto and the Isabel Bader Theatre in Kingston in 2020. In May 2019, I was a finalist in the Peterborough Arts Awards Mid-Career Artist category in Media Arts. Also, in 2019, I received the Public Energy Performing Arts Silver Jubilee Award for outstanding contributions in its first 25 years, and my first full-length feature film, BIRTHMARK (2018), received an Honourable Mention from Commfest Global Film Festival in Toronto. My latest film, Circus Boy (2020), about Peterborough father/son team Thomas Vaccaro and Ethan Hinshelwood, is slated for release later year by First Run Features. My film Twelve (2009), produced with CBC and the National Film Board of Canada, about twelve Canadians who advise their twelve-year-old selves won the Reel Diversity Competition. The documentary tracing my missing grandfather's footsteps, Trying to Be Some Kind of Hero (2003), was shown in various festivals and officially included in the Canadian National Archives. It also won the Best Moviemaker Award from the Optic-Nerve Media Festival. My short This City Has Wings (2010), a collection of motion portraits of random passers-by as angels, won Best Cinematography from the Millbrook International Three Minute Film Festival. Rigoletto...in Bluegrass, which I edited, won Best Originality from the Kentucky Bluegrass Film Festival, and my video Bancroft is Most Talented Town in Ontario won TVOntario's First Prize. I host and produce iTunes podcasts like Uke Box, the all-ukulele radio show, and SoundProof, a podcast described as "creative nonfiction for audio." I also take 35mm photographs and occasionally exhibit them outside my website (https://lesteralfonso.com) or Instagram (@by_LA_Alfonso). This year, I received the Bagnani Award for academic excellence with my Master's Degree in Public Texts from Trent University. I'm now pursuing a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies.