North Of Summer

North Of Summer
Broken Telephone (Independent, www.northofsummer.com)

You can tell from the beginning of Broken Telephone’s opener “Lost Track” that they like to operate on a grand scale. They make use of a big spacey sound and successfully juxtapose it onto a steady diet of folk and blues flavoured rock. Vocalist Timothy Kingston somehow manages to channel Bono, Thom Yorke and Axl Rose all at once – which is a big part of North of Summer’s larger-than-life sound. Fortunately they manage to avoid the typical pifalls of having such lofty ambitions and don’t get too bogged down. “Big Ol’ Rock” cuts loose with a great piano riff and surf guitar while “Hey, Moses” skips merrily through puddles of big-band blues, beatnik poetry and punk rock. The greatest strength of Broken Telephone is its ability to shift gears seamlessly and without warning, making it very difficult music to pigeonhole, but lots of fun to listen to. - Jon Sohn
File Next To: Spacehog, The White Stripes - Wavelength

Final touches on new film planned; Movie shot in Peterborough, Maynooth area
by WERNER BERGEN
Peterborough Examiner / Entertainment

A film crew shooting a movie who occasionally break out into song is the premise of a new film by local filmmaker Lester Alfonso.

Award-winning local filmmaker Lester Alfonso, known for his autobiographical film Trying to Be Some Kind of Hero and the Sound + Vision series which featured modern silent films with live musical performances, is in the final editing stages of his latest endeavour - a film entitled The Gold Rushes featuring music from North of Summer and Tammy Foreman.

The film was shot over two weeks in Peterborough and the Lake St. Peter provincial park near Maynooth.

"This my first foray into a semi-fiction. I usually do documentaries," said Alfonso, in a telephone interview from Toronto where he is working with a filmmaker for the Toronto Film Festival.

The Canada Council had given him a grant to make a documentary about his missing grandfather. (Trying to Be Some Kind of Hero). And it was the award he received from the Peterborough Arts Umbrella that got him interested in Peterborough.

"I had moved to Lake St. Peter, working in commercial film industry," he said. " I was given the opportunity to stay in this beautiful house up in Lake St. Peter and make a studio there. I worked there for three years and just kept coming down to Peterborough for city amenities and ended up finding like-minded people. I ended up meeting my sort-of instructor at York University - Steve Rose- at Powerhouse Digital Video, so I worked with them for a few years."

Hero has been shown in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, under the Filipino American Journey program.

"My grandfather was an American GI stationed in the Philippines and begat my mother. My mother never knew about her grandfather."

In The Gold Rushes, Alfonso wanted to figure out a new way of including music in a film.

"I just didn't want to make a music video or a movie musical in the traditional sense. There's no lip-syncing here. Every song is a live performance and I piece it together like a documentary film. It's musical verite"

A diverse collection of actors, musicians and filmmakers such as Brian Mitolo, Michael Morritt, Tammy Foreman, Kate Story and Timothy Kingston play various parts in the movie which is part reality, part fiction and part musical.

Foreman wrote the main theme song entitled Gold which is sung by various characters as seen in the introduction credits of the film. More music is written and performed by Timothy Kingston from local pop/art rock band North of Summer who released their first full-length LP on Aug. 15.

The plot line crosses between three different characters - filmmaker, a location scout and a singer - and the three different characters are shown in their lives.

"Ultimately the big punchline in my film is that they get connected at the end. They don't actually know they're part of the same film.

"In the end you see they're in the same project together and what you're seeing is the film itself that they were shooting."

Alfonso said he would love to play it in Peterborough.

"I'd like to hold a screening, opening it up to selected people as a work in progress. I was hoping to do that at Artspace.

"I have only shown the cut I have now to six or seven people. The response has been incredible. The encouragement I have gotten from people has been amazing and it has nourished me.

Although still in the editing stage, Alfonso says he's already planning to shoot, not one but two sequels: Oil and Sugar.

Alfonso said he has always been a filmmaker.

"I went to York University film school. I've been making films ever since I was a kid. I grew up in Windsor. As a kid I would make movies with my toys. I would never just play with my toys, I'd make movies with my toys. So I think I've always been a filmmaker."



- Peterborough Examiner