Kevin Jerome Everson came to film from art—photography, sculpture, printmaking, and painting—and this training forms the basis of his approach, which emphasizes form and materiality. Born in working-class Ohio, he teaches in Virginia; in his films, he explores the daily life of these and similar communities, as well as their forgotten histories. He primarily films black Americans, including his extended family, as they tell stories, work, and play. And while the results may at first appear casual, they are highly crafted and layered, sometimes staged. For writer and curator Greg de Cuir, Everson is “a populist filmmaker, dignifying the (creative) work of those who are not often celebrated in society and rather remain invisible to cultured eyes.” Critic Michael Sicinski writes, “Everson has the same type of relationship to documentary codes as filmmakers like Chris Marker, Trinh T. Minh-ha, James Benning . . . and others, who call upon the apparent transparency of realistic film meaning in order to take the viewer somewhere else.” We invite you to experience this other place in two fascinating programs.
Everson will be in conversation with Michael B. Gillespie, author of Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film and an associate professor of film at the City College of New York, CUNY. On Thursday evening, they will be joined by Los Angeles artist Edgar Arceneaux, whose recent solo shows include the Los Angeles premiere of Library of Black Lies at the Beta Main Museum and an exhibition at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects.
Kathy Geritz, Film Curator