Kevin Jerome Everson

This short is based on Chester Himes’s novel Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and its adaptation for the screen by Ossie Davis in 1970. The cotton in the novel and film comes from the region around Columbus, Mississippi. Shot in noir-style, the film focuses on the scene when detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones interrogate Lo-Boy, an artist/hustler, about the event around the demise of his friend Early Riser.

Based on William Demby's 1965 novel The Catacombs.

by Kevin Jerome Everson

No synopsis available yet.

"A 16mm cinematic exploration of African American intellectual, social, and political life at the University of Virginia during the 1970s. Conceived and written by UVA History Professor and author Claudrena Harold and directed by Harold and UVA Professor of Art, filmmaker/artist Kevin Jerome Everson, the film stars Erin Stewart (the bank teller/race driver in Everson's 2006 feature film "Cinnamon") as Vivian Gordon (the director of UVA's Black Studies program between 1975 and 1980). The film tells the story of African-American women and men who through their public and private gestures sought to create a beloved community that thrived on intellectual exchange, self-critique, and human warmth." - Trilobite-Arts-DAC, Claudrena Harold, Picture Palace Pictures

Based on the film Anna's Sin (1953).

This short is based on Chester Himes’s novel Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and its adaptation for the screen by Ossie Davis in 1970. The cotton in the novel and film comes from the region around Columbus, Mississippi. Shot in noir-style, the film focuses on the scene when detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones interrogate Lo-Boy, an artist/hustler, about the event around the demise of his friend Early Riser.

This short is based on Chester Himes’s novel Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and its adaptation for the screen by Ossie Davis in 1970. The cotton in the novel and film comes from the region around Columbus, Mississippi. Shot in noir-style, the film focuses on the scene when detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones interrogate Lo-Boy, an artist/hustler, about the event around the demise of his friend Early Riser.

This short is based on Chester Himes’s novel Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and its adaptation for the screen by Ossie Davis in 1970. The cotton in the novel and film comes from the region around Columbus, Mississippi. Shot in noir-style, the film focuses on the scene when detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones interrogate Lo-Boy, an artist/hustler, about the event around the demise of his friend Early Riser.

Based on William Demby's 1965 novel The Catacombs.

by Kevin Jerome Everson

No synopsis available yet.

"A 16mm cinematic exploration of African American intellectual, social, and political life at the University of Virginia during the 1970s. Conceived and written by UVA History Professor and author Claudrena Harold and directed by Harold and UVA Professor of Art, filmmaker/artist Kevin Jerome Everson, the film stars Erin Stewart (the bank teller/race driver in Everson's 2006 feature film "Cinnamon") as Vivian Gordon (the director of UVA's Black Studies program between 1975 and 1980). The film tells the story of African-American women and men who through their public and private gestures sought to create a beloved community that thrived on intellectual exchange, self-critique, and human warmth." - Trilobite-Arts-DAC, Claudrena Harold, Picture Palace Pictures

Based on the film Anna's Sin (1953).

Lake Idlewild is the idyllic Black resort town of Idlewild Michigan, is where Danielle Thesiger rows.

SPICEBUSH interweaves various fragmentary narratives concerning education, luck. landscapes, gaining and losing a job, and the passage of time. The technique and style employed alternates between the documentary, the symbolic, and more conventionally scripted scenes. Filming individuals engaged in their careers conveys the documentary aspect. At a symbolic level, the fossil is a leitmotif suggesting past and present. The title of the film refers to the state butterfly of Mississippi, Spicebush Swallowtail. In the film, Mississippi is a place of origin. The Spicebush Swallowtail represents renewal or starting over. Throughout the film, a little girl appears in different guises and settings, functioning indirectly in the role of the chorus. The scripted scenes, shot in a documentary style, collaged with the other scenes begin to create the traces of a narrative structure.

SPICEBUSH interweaves various fragmentary narratives concerning education, luck. landscapes, gaining and losing a job, and the passage of time. The technique and style employed alternates between the documentary, the symbolic, and more conventionally scripted scenes. Filming individuals engaged in their careers conveys the documentary aspect. At a symbolic level, the fossil is a leitmotif suggesting past and present. The title of the film refers to the state butterfly of Mississippi, Spicebush Swallowtail. In the film, Mississippi is a place of origin. The Spicebush Swallowtail represents renewal or starting over. Throughout the film, a little girl appears in different guises and settings, functioning indirectly in the role of the chorus. The scripted scenes, shot in a documentary style, collaged with the other scenes begin to create the traces of a narrative structure.

SPICEBUSH interweaves various fragmentary narratives concerning education, luck. landscapes, gaining and losing a job, and the passage of time. The technique and style employed alternates between the documentary, the symbolic, and more conventionally scripted scenes. Filming individuals engaged in their careers conveys the documentary aspect. At a symbolic level, the fossil is a leitmotif suggesting past and present. The title of the film refers to the state butterfly of Mississippi, Spicebush Swallowtail. In the film, Mississippi is a place of origin. The Spicebush Swallowtail represents renewal or starting over. Throughout the film, a little girl appears in different guises and settings, functioning indirectly in the role of the chorus. The scripted scenes, shot in a documentary style, collaged with the other scenes begin to create the traces of a narrative structure.

Chelsea Drive displays three decades of Black student style, fashion and dance at the University of Virginia.

Chelsea Drive displays three decades of Black student style, fashion and dance at the University of Virginia.

A film interpretation of a poem by Vincent Katz.

In 1959 Mississippi, African-American siblings Borne and Gago must repair their vandalized school bus, facing systemic racism. With help from their community and Cassilee, the 'Queen of Catfish Alley', the teens learn history's lessons while pursuing education.

In 1959 Mississippi, African-American siblings Borne and Gago must repair their vandalized school bus, facing systemic racism. With help from their community and Cassilee, the 'Queen of Catfish Alley', the teens learn history's lessons while pursuing education.

In 1959 Mississippi, African-American siblings Borne and Gago must repair their vandalized school bus, facing systemic racism. With help from their community and Cassilee, the 'Queen of Catfish Alley', the teens learn history's lessons while pursuing education.

A short film that "channels the 1966 Cleveland Uprising." - MoMA

Two University of Virginia workers share a drink and conversation at a local nightclub. One worker is a phlebotomist and the other is a former EKG technician who has relocated from New Mexico and works now in the university cafeteria.Starring Ricky Goldman and Richard Cooper. Inspired by the 1973 film "The Mack" starring Max Julian and Richard Pryor.

Two University of Virginia workers share a drink and conversation at a local nightclub. One worker is a phlebotomist and the other is a former EKG technician who has relocated from New Mexico and works now in the university cafeteria.Starring Ricky Goldman and Richard Cooper. Inspired by the 1973 film "The Mack" starring Max Julian and Richard Pryor.

Two gentlemen making a living hustling metal in Cleveland, Ohio.

Chaired by the city’s mayor, Rodick Bobo, a relative of the filmmaker’s, motions are moved, seconded and voted on. Pay rises for city employees, permits for food trucks, and other matters of municipal governance are discussed in view of the camera’s fixed frame. Against a wider backdrop of decrepit democratic systems in the country, a portrait of an attempt at earnest, accountable politics in the USA emerges.

A film about a birdwatcher looking for the state bird of Mississippi.

Based on a recently rediscovered play about a Black youth condemned to death by state execution, who is visited by an angel in his prison cell.

A man blows out the 93 candles on his birthday cake in slow motion and B&W.

Kevin Jerome Everson and his collaborator Kahlil I. Pedizisai filmed the comings and goings in front of a trap house on Empire Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Loosely inspired by Andy Warhol's 1964 film "Empire," which also runs for eight hours.

A 16mm film about an Airman training to be a pilot at Columbus Air Force Base, 14th Flying Training Wing, in Columbus, Mississippi.

A 16mm film about an Airman training to be a pilot at Columbus Air Force Base, 14th Flying Training Wing, in Columbus, Mississippi.

Set in Charlottesville during the early 1990s, "Pride" follows an aspiring writer as she finalises stories for the latest issue of "Pride", a student run newspaper at the University of Virginia. Over a hectic two-day period, she puts the finishing touches on the upcoming issue. Despite the looming deadline, she moves with a calm confidence.

In The Release, professional dancers enact a classic football gesture as a rhythmic dance. Intentionally slowing down the speed of 16mm film, Everson divorces the moves from their original functionality, revealing their engagement with the entire body and surrounding environment. Drawing connections between athletics and performance, the film foregrounds the art inherent in sport.

Company Line is a film about one of the first predominately Black neighborhoods in Mansfield Ohio. The title, Company Line, refers to the name historically used by residents to describe their neighborhood, located on the north side of town close to the old steel mill. The Company Line began during the post–war migration of Blacks from the south to the north in the late 1940’s. The neighborhood was purchased in the early 1970’s and its residents were scattered throughout Mansfield. City employees and former residents of the Company Line narrate accounts of past and present.

KJE captures the grand finale of Emancipation Day, the annual Detroit River Fireworks, in 2014. Founded by Walter Perry, Emancipation Day was celebrated in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, every August 1 from 1932–1967 to mark the anniversary of British Parliment’s abolishment of slavery in 1834. Also known as The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth, the festival was large enough at one time to double the city’s population. As Emancipation Day became increasingly associated with the Freedom Movement across the border, the Windsor Police Department and city council began to push against the event, eventually culminating in its cancellation in reaction to the Detroit rebellion in 1967.

Historic UFO sightings over Mansfield, Ohio, are evoked through memory, report and gesture.

Lost Nothing is the subject Willie James Crittenden waxes poetically about.

by Kevin Jerome Everson

Tonsler Park observes, in black and white 16mm, the democratic process in action, at Charlottesville, Virginia voting precincts, over the course of Election Day, November 8, 2016.

Tonsler Park observes, in black and white 16mm, the democratic process in action, at Charlottesville, Virginia voting precincts, over the course of Election Day, November 8, 2016.

Round Seven centres on mysterious occurrences in and around the city of Mansfield, Ohio, including UFO sightings, the closing of Mansfield Tire and the famous 1978 boxing match between Sugar Ray Leonard and local prizefighter Art McKnight.

Portrait based on the first cinematic representation of Afro-American intimacy in the 1898 film Something Good-Negro Kiss.