Material, procedure and process: these three words define the core of artist-filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson’s artistic practice. It is with this approach, grounded in an early preference for minimalism and a background in sculpture and street photography, that he knows like no other how to evoke the poetics of the lives and experiences of working-class African-American communities.

Living and teaching in Virginia but born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio, as the child of parents who came from Mississippi during the Great Migration, Everson makes films that are inextricably linked to the socio-economic conditions and histories of the Midwest and South of the United States. In over twenty years, he has produced a continuously growing body of work of more than 170 short films and a dozen full-length films, which time and again stand out for their exceptional care for the specificities of place, movement, speech and form.

Kevin Jerome Everson, Eason, 2016, 15’
(with French subtitles)
Part of the one-hundred anniversary of the great Black migration in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Eason is loosely based on the life of James Walker Hood Eason (1886-1923) a long-time member of the UNIA of Philadelphia.

Kevin Jerome Everson, Fe26, 2014, 7’
(with French subtitles)
Shot on 16mm in the summer of 2013, Fe26 follows two gentlemen around the East Side of Cleveland, Ohio, and examines the tensions between illegal work — in this case, the stealing of manhole covers and copper piping — and the basic survival tactics that exist in areas of high unemployment.

Kevin Jerome Everson, Sound That, 2014, 12’
(with French subtitles)
Sound That follows employees of the Cleveland Water Department on the hunt for what lies beneath, as they investigate for leaks in the infrastructure in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The sound invites the viewer/listener into the hollow sounds lurking under Cleveland’s surfaces.

Claudrena N. Harold, Kevin Jerome Everson, Hampton, 2019, 7’
The University of Virginia gospel choir, Black Voices, is returning from a triumphant concert in Hampton Roads.

Kevin Jerome Everson, Music from the Edge of the Allegheny Plateau, 2019, 7’
Rappers and gospel singers, on the streets and in their homes. Everson was inspired by William Klein’s The Little Richard Story (1980), a film that tells the story of the rock-and-roll icon’s life through the eyes and experiences of friends, family, and impersonators.

Kevin Jerome Everson, IFO, 2017, 10’
(with French subtitles)
In Mansfield, Ohio, multiple UFO sightings yield both passionate firsthand accounts and detailed reflections; meanwhile, suburban youths raise their arms toward the heavens in becalmed surrender.

Kevin Jerome Everson, Ears, Nose & Throat, 2016, 10’
(with French subtitles)
A woman’s testimonial faculties are confirmed through medical examinations before she recites a tragic story, whose horrors we don’t see, hear, or smell, but can imagine far too easily.

Kevin Jerome Everson, Recovery, 2020, 10’
An Airman is training to be a pilot at Columbus Air Force Base 14th Flying Training Wing in Columbus, Mississippi.