LENDL TELLINGTON
Working across cinema, photography and installation, Lendl’s practice tinkers with the line between nostalgia and memory as a means to illuminate the contributions of unsung communities and subvert our prescribed histories. Lendl utilizes a combination of documentary and portraiture traditions to present the individuals he documents with a seamless grandeur.
His work has been recognized by Smithsonian’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition and The Creative Alliance resident artist program, supported by BAVC Mediamaker Fellowship, Firelight Media Documentary Lab and The Sundance Documentary Fund. When he’s not behind the camera, Lendl is the Technical Producer for BlackStar Projects, home of the BlackStar Film Festival.
Dancing Despite
Music Video
Watch Here
Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela is a writer, poet, and musician whose work is concerned with little-told histories, Mexican American migration and incarceration.
Dancing Despite nods to the necessity to live life regardless of the circumstances at hand. This music video frames the song’s mantra around the artist’s own motherhood. Filmed in a slow motion single take highlighting the gravity of even the most quotidian gestures.
…that’s why He made momma
feature documentary • art installation
(in post-production)
As they realize they could lose their matriarch's home, a brother and sister turn the camera on their great-grandmother and her nine descendants in order to reimagine their family’s legacy.
As the siblings sift through memories and history, they chronicle the ingenuity of generational single black motherhood and grapple with its inheritance.
The Age of All Women:
The Becoming of Younousse Seye
film • art catalogue
(in production)
Following the career of Younousse Seye, Senegal’s first female contemporary artist, this project consists of a film, art catalogue and exhibition which examine the contingencies that govern the remembrance of Black women artists.
cineportraits
film • photography
(ongoing)
Cinematic vignettes captured with the aesthetics of photo portraiture.
APPEARANCES & ACCLAIM
Back to School: Photo Exhibition, Gravy Studio 2015
The Agitators– Photo Exhibition, 5th Annual BlackStar Film Festival | August 2016
Documentary Lab Fellow, Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund at Johns Hopkins University|October 2016
2017 Grant Recipient, Ruby Artist Grant, Deustch Foundation
2020 Grant Recipient, HBO/IFP True Stories Funding Initiative
2020-2023 Resident Artist, Creative Alliance | Baltimore, MD
2020 Grant Recipient, Philadelphia Contemporary Velocity Fund
2021 Fellow, BAVC Mediamaker Fellowship
2021 Emerging Filmmaker Grant Recipient- Independence Public Media Foundation
Semifinalist, Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition 2022, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
2022–2024 Fellow, Firelight Media Documentary Lab