A Big Indian resident who spent three months traveling across Asia will present a film about his trip Friday, assembled from videos he shot on his iPhone.
Stephen LaMarca’s “Trekkin’ the Ring of Fire: A Three Month Journey Exploring the Culture, Volcanoes and Sacred Sites of Southeast Asia” will screen at the Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston at 7:30 p.m on Friday, Sept. 25. A question-and-answer session with LaMarca will follow.
“What he did was so cool,” said Bryan Zellmer, executive director of Bardavon Presents, which operates UPAC. “I’m glad he can share the experience with us.”
“When you travel, I think you get a different sense of the world,” said LaMarca, 63. “There’s a lot you can learn from other people.”
LaMarca traveled from February to May, visiting Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. His itinerary included five countries, 10 volcanoes, and hundreds of temples. He also made several sunrise hikes up the sides of volcanoes.
Along the way, LaMarca shot videos and posted them to social media. What began as a way to remember the trip became a series of short video journals that drew an audience of friends and strangers.
“I started by doing these video journals, largely so I could remember the trip myself, in a really meaningful way, because I was covering so much ground I had never been on,” he said.
LaMarca began posting three-minute journals with commentary.
“Almost immediately, I had this caravan of friends and strangers start following and commenting and engaging with it in a way that made me connected to people back here, and people felt like they were coming along on this trip with me,” he said.
The trip also took LaMarca back to Bali, where he worked with a company of musicians and dancers 30 years ago.
Friday’s screening will be something of a homecoming. LaMarca spent 31 years as managing director of production for Bardavon Presents and also worked there part-time, on and off, for 11 years. Former Executive Director Chris Silva encouraged the project and worked with LaMarca to assemble the 90-minute film.
“It’s not a polished film,” LaMarca said. “It was all done on my phone on the fly.”
The screening is free, with tickets available at the door.
John W. Barry is a reporter for The Overlook. Reach him at john@theoverlooknews.com.
