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Telesthesia
a film by Jarrod Whaley, with live, improvised musical accompaniment by Dennis Palmer, Bob Stagner, and Athens, GA improvisor Erik Hinds.

Saturday, May 28 on the Main Stage at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre. 8:00 PM. SRLS member admission- $6, non-members- $8.

Telesthesia is a feature-length silent film, more in the tradition of underground/avant-garde film than that of the Silent Cinema of the early twentieth century. Making use of no sound or intertitles whatsoever, the film is an experiment in purely visual storytelling: two human beings forge a close bond over a very great distance, and the mental space they come to inhabit slowly evolves into physical space, bringing them together across the miles between them.

Jarrod Whaley is a Chattanooga, TN filmmaker who has, to this point, worked primarily with digital video. He has made eight short films, one animated short, and is in the midst of producing a suite of five experimental shorts. Many of his films have been presented locally in Chattanooga, in keeping with Whaley's desire to further the idea that localized film communities are quite likely the wave of the cinematic future. Whaley was also a co-organizer/facilitator for the Micromovie Project, is the curator of Free Film Club, and serves as Secretary for the Shaking Ray Levi Society. He currently works as a freelance filmmaker, web designer and videographer, as well as teaching video production workshops for agencies such as the federally funded GEAR UP Program (which is housed at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), the Shaking Ray Levi Society, and UTC’s Division of Continuing Education.

Erik Hinds, based in Athens, Georgia where he performs with a number of genre-pushing groups, has borrowed from a plethora of music styles to forge his vocabulary: folk, country, jazz, even heavy metal. He plays the H'arpeggione, a string instrument built by maker Fred Carlson. A cross between a guitar, cello, and bass, it has six strings with quartertone frets and 12 sympathetic strings. It covers a wide range and opens up the field of microtonal playing, giving Hinds' music a personal color. Hinds also runs the label Solponticello and is a convinced environmentalist -- he designed his own solar-powered house. His first solo album, Cerberus, came out in 2001.

This project is funded in part by an Arts Build Communities grant from Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga and the Tennessee Arts Commission. The film is a co-production of the Shaking Ray Levi Society and Oak Street Films, in partnership with the Chattanooga Theatre Centre.