Kevin Jerome Everson
The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin | 2007 | 3:30mins | 16mm/DV | USA
According to… | 2007 | 8:30mins | 16mm/DV | USA
Undefeated | 2008 | 1:30mins | 16mm/DV | USA | Canadian Premiere
Kevin Jerome Everson (born 1965 in Mansfield, Ohio) is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia. Everson has a MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron. To date he has made three feature-length films and over 50 shorts. In 2005 his debut feature Spicebush, a mediation on rhythms of work and the passage of time in Black American working class communities, premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) and won the Jury Documentary Prize at the New York Underground Film Festival. Cinnamon (2006) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and IFFR and has played at several international film festivals. The 2007 IFFR commissioned Emergency Needs was selected for inclusion in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. His most recent feature The Golden Age of Fish (2008) has shown at IFFR, BAFICI (Argentina) and NYUFF. In 2006, Filmmaker Magazine named Everson one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
In collaboration with producer Madeleine Molyneaux through Trich Arts and Picture Palace Pictures Rhino, Everson is currently developing experimental “bio-pics” of Alessandro della Medici, the 16th century Duke of Florence, born to an African servant woman, and Gail Fisher, the 20th century African-American actress. In May 2009 the Centre Pompidou in Paris will present a film retrospective of Everson’s work, including a survey of his short films and the world premiere of the featurette Company Line, which documents snowplow operators and other workers in his hometown of Mansfield, Ohio.
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The Reverend E. Randall T. Osborn, First Cousin is part of Everson’s Cleveland Trilogy, three short films from past and present Cleveland that also include Emergency Needs (2008 Whitney Biennial) and North. The good Reverend, Executive Director of the Cleveland chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and first cousin to the late Dr. Martin Luther King, calmly and matter-of-factly discusses local fallout in the wake of unrest with a news reporter in an interview that is as much about listening as it is about talking.
In According to… stories of interracial murders in the American South are told not once but twice. An old man engages in his daily routine of information gathering by retrieving the daily newspaper off his front porch. A young girl rings the bell, possibly to deliver some news or just engage in her daily routine. It’s business as usual, according to…. whom you get your news from.
Undefeated is a film about mobility and immobility– or just trying to stay warm. When automobiles prove unworthy opponents, two generations demonstrate their work ethic. In any job there’s always a confident fighter on the sidelines.
Featured in: The Contact Zone
