So I was always taught in my textbooks that the last verb in a sentence
dictates the whole tense of the sentence, e.g:

> 神戸に行って、映画を見ました。  
>  I WENT to Kobe and WATCHED a movie.

However, I've started these examples and now I'm confused:

> テレビはAl Goreによって発明されて、今世界中で楽しまれています。  
>  The television WAS created by Al Gore and IS enjoyed all over the world.
>
> 眠り猫は眠っている猫の彫刻で、左甚五郎が彫りました。  
>  The sleeping cat IS a carving of a cat asleep and Hidari Jingoro CREATED
> it.

Does this mean the tense of the first て form sometimes has to be inferred from
the context?
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て-form tense
Does the tense of the final verb ALWAYS dictate the tense of an earlier て form verb?
The tense of the final verb does not always dictate the tense of an earlier て
form, but it inferred from context.

Very often, the tense of the て form verb does match the tense of the verb at
the end of the sentence, but context is key. You can think of the て form as
having neutral tense, as its tense is always dependent on the rest of the
sentence.

Looking at your examples:

> テレビはAl Goreによって発明されて、今世界中で楽しまれています。

We know that television has already been invented, so the only sensible
interpretation of this is that it happened in the past. The 楽しまれています doesn't
force a present tense.

> 眠り猫は眠っている猫の彫刻で、左甚五郎が彫りました。

If we can assume that the carving still exists, then the present tense is the
only sensible understanding. However, if it had been established that the
carving had been destroyed, then in English we'd have used the past tense. In
reality, Japanese does care about the tense here; you can't really say that
the で has a tense. You have to give it one in an English translation, but
don't put too much weight on the translation in determining the meaning in
Japanese.

In your first sentence, you can use time words to put the て verb into the
past. It's not the most natural sentence, but it makes sense.

> 昨日神戸に行って、明日映画を見ます。
>
> Yesterday I went to Kobe, and tomorrow I'll watch a film.

Note how it changes the nuance as well, though. In your sentence, the
implication is that you watched a film in Kobe, now it sounds as though it was
a day trip.

I have read that in good Japanese prose, the て form should be used sparingly
to join sentences, because it robs the writer of defining the connection
between them. A conjunction would remove any ambiguity.
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answer