diary of a filmmaker

March 29, 2010

I am delighted to report The Beauty of Damage – The World of Christopher Pekoc has just won the Kodak Best Ohio Short Film at the  Cleveland International Film Festival. This award comes with a $1000 cash prize. Congratulations to Writer & Producer Henry Adams, Director of Cinematography Ted Sikora, Sound Editor Jeff Gates and of course the Artist himself, Christopher Pekoc!

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December 18, 2009

Recent NYT article about Kandinsky features the circle motif and makes the Telos Logo even cooler than it already is. The writer of the article, Natalie Angier, quotes Kandinsky:

I also learned of Kandinsky’s growing love affair with the circle. The circle, he wrote, is “the most modest form, but asserts itself unconditionally.” It is “simultaneously stable and unstable,” “loud and soft,” “a single tension that carries countless tensions within it.”

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August 9, 2009

The Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday Arts Profile by Evelyn Thiess. Photo by Lonnie Timmons.

PDF Front Page (easy to read)

PDF Inside (easy to read)

Cleveland Plain Dealer Link

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June 15th 2009

The Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation will hold it’s annual meeting at Severance Hall next week. They will showcase their outstanding work in the Cleveland Schools for the past 10 years distributing free eyeglasses to the students who need them. Telos created an 11 minute video to tell this story. Congratulations to the Mt. Sinai Foundation and to Helen Keller International for 10 years of wonderful work with their ChildSight program.

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The Telos Program FOCUSED CALM – The Architecture of Healing at Cleveland Clinic just won an International Silver Telly (which is their highest award) in the 2009 30th Anniversary Telly Awards. This program showcases the outstanding work of Landscape Architect, Peter Walker and Cleveland Clinic’s new $634 million dollar expansion.

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10 Reasons I bought a Kindle

#10 – The Gadget Factor – I like gadgets. Reading the Kindle makes me feel futuristic. You can easily imagine Jean Luc Picard of Star Trek using one in his cabin on board the Starship Enterprise. I’m sure Captain Picard orders “Earl Grey – hot” from the food replicator before he sits down to read his Kindle.

#9 – Whispernet – There is a cellphone technology built into it that requires no subscription fee. They call the service Whispernet and it means you can order a book from Amazon in about 30 seconds anytime, anywhere, no network or internet connection is required.

#8 – Free 1st Chapters – You can download sample chapters for free. I love to browse in the bookstore and read a bit before I buy a book. The Kindle gives me an optional entire first chapter to try out a book before I buy it. Books usually cost under ten bucks but the ability to try out anything for free really widens your reading world.

#7 – iPhone Sync – It works in sync with the iPhone. Thanks to the Whisperjet network if I start reading a book on the Kindle in the morning and am waiting around at the Dentist in the afternoon, I can open up the free Kindle app on the iPhone and it jumps right to the exact page where I left off.

#6 – Access – I love my iPod and having so much and so many varied types of music available to me at almost all times. The Kindle brings this same sort of selection, portability and access to Literature.

#5 – $150 Million Dollar Screen – The screen technology cost 150 million dollars to develop and perfect. It can be read in bright sunlight. It is easy on the eyes and does not give you a headache the way some people complain about reading on the computer.

#4 – Search – Kindle books are totally searchable. I don’t mean just Index searches I mean word searches. Where was that quote Kipling said about the “little friend of all the world?” You can find it in seconds.

#3 – More than Books – Blogs, daily newspapers and a large selection of magazines (including the New Yorker) are available, so are free books from sites like Feedbooks.

#2 – Research – The Kindle is the inevitable future of learning. Soon most textbooks will be available. For research, there are ways to comment, highlight, clip and organize your notes about what you read.

#1 – Travel – I travel a lot and I love to read. Travel has become such a total pain it is always good to have a book handy. I especially love to read travel writers who write of horrible adversity when I travel. Nothing like reading about someone’s three-months-long misfortune to make that irritating 4 hour delay seem trite.

Robert Byron, who is perhaps the best travel writer of all time, talks about how books are the first thing a modern traveller leaves behind. He quotes an author in one of the books he has brought with him on his journey.

“In the Afghan exploration of 1910, Moorcroft’s books (thirty volumes) were recovered and the list of them would surprise any modern traveller who believes in a light and handy equipment.”

Byron exclaims, “What surprises me is that considering he was away five years, there should have been so few.” Well, Robert those days are gone forever. On my next trip I’m packing 50 books in less space (and weight) than is taken up by a Time magazine.

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Christopher Pekoc’s Retrospective Night Visions at Tregoning Gallery

Featuring 26 collages from 1975–2000, Christopher Pekoc’s early work can be seen at Tregoning&Co through March. The exhibition will also feature the Telos film, The Beauty of Damage.

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Google Books now on iPhone

One of the Telos Blogs which received the most comments was Sight Reading about the rise of e-books and the tactile nature of reading from paper. This week, Amazon released the new Kindle an e-book reader that holds 1,500 books in memory. Perfect for that long flight! Also, in recent weeks Google announced a new free service which allows you to access the full text of seven million [!] e-books right from your iPhone or cell phone. Totally amazing!

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DEC 12, 2008 – Museum News – THE CENTRAAL MUSEUM, in Utrecht, The Netherlands will include the Telos film, Theatre de la Mode as part of an exhibition of fashion dolls by the House of Victor & Rolf.

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The Peter B. Lewis Library of Science, at Princeton, was officially dedicated on November 20, 2008. Full story here

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Dec 12, 2008 – Museum News – The exhibition featuring the Telos film: A Constructive Madness – is now on view at The PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM of ART. I saw the exhibition a couple of weeks ago and it is really impressive! First of all the Philadelphia Museum is one of the largest in the U.S. The exhibition is filled with not only the film but with Frank Gehry’s furniture and models, drawings & jewelry.

Design and process of The Lewis House by Frank O. Gehry is curated by Kathryn Heisinger. She says, “A Constructive Madness is in it everywhere, like a visible narrator. Frank was here and said the show was “beautifully designed.” The exhibition opened on November 8th and will run through April 5th, 2009

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Nov 1, 2008 – New section on the Telos Website about Fine Art Photographer Luca Campigotto. Dreamy night time photo slideshow of Venice. Gorgeous work!

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Telos and Commercial Recording were recently hired by TIME magazine to document the shooting of their cover story on LeBron James.

For the video interview and to see and hear the outstanding job done by Ted Sikora (camera) and Jeff Gates (sound) click on the cover of TIME and the great photo of King James taken by the incomparable Jill Greenberg.