The Boston Premiere of:Kevin Everson's
Cinnnamon
& Spicebush
http://www.keverson.com/
http://www.picturepalacepictures.com/
Kevin Jerome Everson is a fiercely prolific filmmaker and visual artist whose work focuses on the conditions, tasks, gestures and materials of Black working-class communities. Currently Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Everson has a MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron. Born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio he has made two highly acclaimed features and over 40 award-winning short films. In 2006, he was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the top 25 New Faces in Independent Film. In 2005, his debut feature, SPICEBUSH, a mediation on rhythms of work and the passage of time in Black American working class communities, world premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and won the Jury Documentary Prize at the New York Underground Film Festival.
CINNAMON (2006), world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and IFFR and has played at several international film festivals. Everson is currently developing two feature projects with producer Madeleine Molyneaux through Trich Arts and Picture Palace Pictures: the experimental narrative RHINO (submitted for consideration for CINEMART 2007) and Lowndes County, a collaboration with playwright Talaya Delaney about a community of Black teenagers in 1950s Mississippi on the eve of school desegregation. His photographs, sculptures and films have been exhibited internationally at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Studio Museum in Harlem, Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, REDCAT (L.A.), Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, William Busta Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland, Whitechapel Gallery in London, the American Academy, Rome and in Italy, France, China and Germany. His films have been shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2006; the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2003, 2005, 2006; FID Marseille (curated by Emmanuel Burdeau of Cahiers du Cinema; Munich International; Cinematexas, Austin, Texas, Ann Arbor Film Festival (5x), LA Film Festival, New York Underground Film Festival (3x), International Center of the Arts in London, New School of Social Research, Black Maria Film Festival (2004 Best Film), Athens International Film Festival (4x including a solo screening), Shorts International in New York (4x), the Siskel Theater in Chicago (solo screening),Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, University of Central Florida, Princeton University, and South by Southwest Film Festival (Best Experimental Award for Thermostat). Kevin Jerome Everson has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a NEA fellowship, two NEH Fellowships, a Creative Capital Grant, two Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, an American Academy Rome Prize, Yaddo, MacDowell Colony and numerous University Fellowships.
Spicebush (2005, 73 minutes) is an experimental feature film that interweaves various fragmentary narratives concerning education, 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.
Cinnamon (2006, 71 minutes) presents a glimpse into a unique subculture: the world of African-American drag racing. Set in and around Charlottesville, Virginia, it is an experimental feature film about the consistent routine of a bank teller (Erin) and a mechanic (John) as they prepare for the sport of drag racing. Once the routine is disrupted, the result of the race comes into doubt.
