Maynooth Celtic Festival (1 min. 2006) Shot, directed, and edited by Lester Alfonso a quick look at Maynooth, Ontario’s annual gathering.

13/360

Day 13 of 360 videos from my archive. Today’s video was a commission from the town of Maynooth, Ontario to put on their website. The aspect ratio of the Quicktime movie file I found is 320 x 240. This was when high definition video on the internet was just a dream. I haven’t found the original master yet.

I got an email today from the daughter of someone who was briefly seen in yesterday’s video. Because she never had a video of her Dad, seeing him even briefly in motion must have stirred up a dust cloud of previously locked memories. She says she wants to pay me for any more footage I might have. I am heartened that I can bring some personal joy to someone because I happen to hit record on my camera. And yes, I archived them all so that I can go back and look.

This is part of the reason why I don’t want to hoard all of these videos to myself. They are left unseen by those who need to see. They need to see themselves and how they’ve changed (or how they’ve stayed the same.) For those who have passed, especially those who were camera-shy, seeing a glimpse of them in a candid way reveals much more somehow than a posed Sears portrait.

There’s a glimpse in this video of poet Peter Jones who passed away last year.

Peter Jones, poet (2006)

This is another of my one-minute jobbies. I worked hard on perfecting the one-minute movie because I was on a mission to master the craft of shaping a video together with a beginning, middle, and end in under a minute. I’m still on that mission, I realize now. — LA

If you’re liking these daily posts, perhaps you can consider becoming a monthly donor for a year or making a one-time contribution. It would seriously help a lot. Your money goes directly into supporting an artist committed to continually become the best version of himself. Thank you so much! Much love, LA