- - -
- TAMMY FOREMAN | LESTER ALFONSO
Together, they are Original Plastic.
Lester Alfonso is a filmmaker, writer and video artist producing media art and content commercially and independently for over ten years. He attended the film and writing program at York University in Toronto, Ontario where he wrote and directed THE BEST WAITRESS IN THE WORLD, which was selected for the Montréal World Student Film Festival in 1992 and was eventually broadcast on CBC Television in 2005. In 1995, Lester moved to New York City where he worked his way up from Production Assistant to Assistant Editor and Editor on American and European commercials, eventually becoming Editor, Producer and Director when he returned to Toronto in 2000 to create commercials for Nickelodeon Asia among others. At this time, he also founded the Hijack art collective where he started experimenting with site-specific live projections to music and performance. This continues today as [Sound+Vision] - a collective he founded that produces live musical performances to old or new silent films. In 2001, Lester received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts to produce a personal documentary tracing the footsteps of his missing grandfather. The resulting film is called TRYING TO BE SOME KIND OF HERO which received the "Best New Moviemaker" award from the Optic-Nerve Festival. The film eventually became the official selection for 14 other North American film festivals including Images Festival in Toronto, Outer Limits Video Series in New York and the Asian Pacific American Film Festival in Washington, D.C. Reel Asian Film Festival gave Lester an Artist Spotlight in 2003 and the film was also a finalist at the Innoversity Creative Summit in 2004. Lester continues to collaborate with singer/composer Tammy Foreman as Original Plastic and has expanded his collaborations and experiments with live video mixing and projections by creating work that includes choreography, live musical improvisations and other artisitic disciplines. Lester created work for choreographer Deepti Gupta on "Rubies" (2003) and "Static" (2007) and he researched, edited and live-mixed with Peter Mettler on "Elsewhere" (2006) for the Toronto International Film Festival. On the Web, aside from Original Plastic, Lester has an audio blog based on making "mixtapes" out of free downloads (Radio Free Download) and regularly updates new video work on his YouTube channel. CBC Television has been featuring Lester's internet video uploads since 2002 on ZeD TV and in 2007, his "Motion8," created with Peterborough artists, was featured by Salon.com and MySpace.com which also featured his 30 sec. documentary "The View From the Parking Lot" on its front page. Also in 2007, Lester won the National Film Board of Canada's Reel Diversity competition with his concept for TWELVE - a new non-fiction film that documents his journey to meet twelve people who came to Canada at twelve years old like himself. TWELVE is due for release sometime in 2008 - 2009. info@originalplastic.com |
