Off to See the Wizard: Bringing Tesla to the Screen

The Long Island History Project

“Showing the Inventor in the Effulgent Glory of Myriad Tongues of Electric Flame After He Has Saturated Himself with Electricity.” New York World, July 22, 1894.

Nikola Tesla was a bona fide Gilded Age celebrity, pulling front page headlines in the New York press and attracting the rich and famous to his late night laboratory demonstrations. You were nobody until Tesla shot you through with electricity.

And now Tesla’s time has come again. We conclude our special Tesla Month here at the Long island History Project talking to filmmaker Joe Sikorski about his documentary Tower to the People: Tesla’s Dream at Wardenclyffe Continues. Co-written with Michael Calomino, Tower to the People tells the story of Tesla and the successful fight to save his Wardenclyffe lab.

Bringing Tesla’s story to the screen has been a labor of love of Joe’s for some time and you’ll hear about his original dream: the full-length feature film Fragments from Olympus. We discuss the challenges of documentary film making and reveal more of Tesla’s fascinating life and why it lends itself so perfectly to film.

Are you in Los Angeles October 23-29th? Catch a special screening of Tower to the People at the Crest Theatre, 1262 Westwood Blvd. And tell them the Long Island History Project sent you!

http://wwwx.dowling.edu/library/new/JoeSikorski.mp3

Stream in the player above or download audio.

Further Research

• Tower to the People documentary trailer
• Fragments from Olympus feature film
• Teslasdream.com (for news and current showings)
• Crest Theatre on Facebook
• Interview with Jane Alcorn of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe (Part 1 and Part 2)
• Selected Tesla flimography (from IMDB)
  • Tesla (2016)
  • Pictures of Infinity (2015)
  • Tesla’s Engine (2014)
  • The Prestige (2006)

Click to view slideshow.