Postcard from Bobcaygeon (3 min. 2016) Story by Kathleen Shea Gehmair. Produced and edited by Lester Alfonso and developed through CNFW.
Day 32 of 360 videos from my archive. Kathleen Shea Gehmair’s video uses postcards and historical photos mixed with her personal family photos. Postcards from Bobcaygeon repurposes the unseen archival photo — the photos that don’t make it into the cultural consciousness — unless they’re used!
Obscured pictures from smaller towns can be “revitalized” like this: presenting a video with the recollections of a “real” local — someone who grew up there and have the strongest memories attached to the places, maybe even buildings, streets, and structures pictured in the photos.
To inspire the group with the possibilities of how to use old documents, letters, postcards, checkbooks, and the like, to make films, we screened the Alan Berliner films Intimate Stranger and First Cousin Once Removed.
I suggested that we all write him a postcard after a screening of First Cousin and I provided postcards and stamps and we call silently wrote to him for a few minutes after the film. Some of those postcards could end up in one of his films someday, I said.
Read my essay What I Learned from Alan Berliner’s Surrealist Nonfiction Cinema to hear more about one of the great filmmaking influences of in my life. More soon. — LA
P.S. 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