Wed 8/9 @ 7-8:30PM
Filmmaker/photographer/painter/sculptor Kevin Jerome Everson has come a long way since he was born in the nondescript, struggling Ohio town of Mansfield. While many don’t make it out (it’s known for high crime and rates of addiction), he moved onto the University of Akron and then to Ohio University for his MFA. Since then, the 58-year-old artist, who teaches at the University of Virginia, has become known for his creative use of the film medium to depict the lives of ordinary working people, especially African-Americans migrating northward to find a better life, doing so by showing and implying rather than telling.
For instance, his 2009 film Erie looks at the struggles of Black working class family life in the Lake Erie region, including Cleveland and his hometown via arresting black & white images presented without commentary. His 2020 short film Glenville (one of more than 100 short films he’s made) re-imagines a recently re-discovered 1898 brief clip of two Black people kissing. And his 2017 film Tonsler Park, also black and white, visits several 2016 voting locations in a Black neighborhood in Charlottesville, Virginia —the city where the lethal “Unite the Right” rally took place in August 2017.
So it’s quite a coup that Art House Inc in Cleveland’s Brooklyn Center neighborhood has snagged him to speak at their next Community Culture Night. The program is free; RSVP here.