There was a Cabaret. (25 min. 2005) Directed, edited, and shot by Lester Alfonso as a private commission for the cast and crew of Cabaret at the Arlington Hotel in Maynooth, Ontario.
Clickety-clack. Don’t look back. Publish everything. I was already doing it anyway; Day 72. I got to keep consistent. I’m releasing my videos, my body of work, one by one. But maybe that’s not fast enough? There’s no reason to miss a day but I thought it was going to be easy to just make the Vimeo On-Demand title available. Turns out, it wasn’t just a matter of clicking a box with a checkmark. Today, it’s finally available online without the paywall that I was experimenting with. Enjoy another digital world premiere of one of my most cherished creations. I’m a folk-filmmaker witness, and, I have to tell you and show you; there was a Cabaret.
There was a Master of Ceremonies. There was a town called Maynooth in a province called Ontario. Welcome to the cabaret. Where everything is beautiful.
I may not have been part of the cast but I was welcomed by many familiar faces like their own. The production had taken over the entire hotel for this staging. The Arlington ostensibly become the Kit Kat Club for those heady days in April/May 2005. My dear friend Wayne (WEBmadman) Elliott came with me.
I think I truly love theatre and camera here was a way for me to belong. It was a way for me to understand. I insist on a kind of storytelling through the ordering of footage. It’s instinctual in the way I organize the footage perhaps because of so many films I’ve seen growing up, studying them in film school, and doing my own research. I apply the language of the Hollywood cinema to the two-bit footage I get from my space-age miniature camera.
“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.”
Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin
Not unlike the character that Christopher Isherwood created on which Cabaret is based. I can similarly say “I am a camera.” I stand witness to the passing clouds before me; these passing clouds are like passing thoughts and they are not me. I am the camera.
I am a placement artist. I sequence the images in a particular linear order. I place the sounds to overlap each other seamlessly in a linear order. I am a placement artist.
I am a storyteller. I use elements around me to constantly create works of placement. Placing one element next to another is where the story starts. I am a storyteller.
What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play. Come to my (Virtual) Cabaret.
More soon so stay tuned! —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