ACCORDING TO KEVIN JEROME EVERSON

According to Kevin Jerome Everson is a series of eleven recent short films and videos by this prolific filmmaker, who has produced over fifty shorts and three feature films since the 1980s. Grounded in historical research and possessing a strong sense of place, Everson (b. 1965) combines documentary and scripted elements with formalism. Archival footage is re-edited and real people perform fictional scenarios based on their own lives: the result is an observation on the personal histories, urban myths, and social conditions of the Afro-American working class. In Company Line, the first Black neighbourhoods in his hometown of Mansfield (Ohio) are examined, while in Something Else, in which found-footage is the subject matter, Miss Black Roanoke expresses her thoughts about the upcoming Miss Black Virginia 1971 Pageant.
In this sense, without stopping at standard realism, his films are oblique metaphors about art-making, the turning of daily experiences into theatrical gestures. As Everson once stated: “I like to observe how gestures at work can be considered an artistic gesture and form of expression, how the repetition of gesture becomes second nature.”

Company Line
2009, 30’, b&w and color, English spoken.
Ring
2008, 1’30”, b&w, silent.
Telethon
2009, 5’, b&w and color, English spoken.
Something Else
2007, 2’, colour, English spoken.
According to…
2007, 8’30”, b&w, English spoken.
Lead
2009, 3’, b&w, English spoken.
Second and Lee
2008, 3’, b&w, English spoken.
The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin
2007, 3’30”, b&w, English spoken.
The Citizens
2009, 5’45”, b&w and color, English spoken.
The Picnic
2007, 2’30”, b&w, silent.
Fifeville
2005, 15’, b&w, English spoken.