“A unique cinematic monument.”–Greg de Cuir, Jr.
For more than a decade, filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson and historian Claudrena N. Harold have collaborated on a series of poetic films that examine Black life at the University of Virginia (UVA) while also echoing the experiences of Black students and faculty across the United States. Collectively titled Black Fire, these works highlight figures like Vivian Gordon, who led UVA’s Black Studies program in the 1970s, and Kent Merritt, one of UVA’s first Black scholarship athletes, as well as the spaces where Black students have reflected and organized through the years. Using performance, interviews, and reenactment, Everson and Harold bring this history into a resonant conversation with the present.
Presented in partnership with Video Data Bank in conjunction with the release of the box set Can You Move Like This: Black Fire, and SAIC’s Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Followed by a conversation with filmmakers Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold, Emily Martin, Distribution Manager at Video Data Bank, and Paige Taul, Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at SAIC.
2013–23, USA
Format: Digital
In English
77 minutes followed by discussion
PROGRAM
Sugarcoated Arsenic
2013, 20 minutes
Starring Erin Stewart as Vivian Gordon, the director of UVA’s Black Studies program between 1975 and 1980, Sugarcoated Arsenic tells the story of Black women and men who sought to create a community of intellectual exchange, self-critique, and human warmth.
Pride
2021, 7 minutes
Set in Charlottesville during the early 1990s, an aspiring writer finalizes stories for the latest issue of Pride, a student-run newspaper at UVA.
How Can I Ever Be Late
2017, 5 minutes
Black students at UVA greet the band Sly and the Family Stone at the Charlottesville airport in 1973.
Accidental Athlete
2023, 7 minutes
Paulette Jones Morant recounts being one of the first Black women scholastic athletes at UVA.
Fastest Man in the State
2017, 10 minutes
Kent Merritt waxes poetically about being one of the first four Black scholarship athletes at UVA.
Black Bus Stop
2019, 9 minutes
“This film pays tribute to the Black Bus Stop, an informal yet iconic gathering spot for Black students on the campus of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in the ‘80s and ‘90s.” (Claudrena N. Harold)
70kg
2017, 3 minutes
Two UVA wrestlers take instruction.
We Demand
2016, 10 minutes
The story of the anti-Vietnam War movement from the perspective of James R. Roebuck, the first Black president of UVA’s Student Council.
Gospel Hill
2022, 5 minutes
Two Black UVA hospital employees talk about the job site in an Albemarle County speakeasy.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Kevin Jerome Everson’s practice encompasses photography, printmaking, sculpture, and film, including 12 award-winning features and more than 250 solo and collaborative short form works. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Heinz Award in Art and Humanities, Berlin Prize, Alpert Award for Film/Video, and Rome Prize. His work has been the subject of retrospectives and solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art; Tate Modern, London; Cinema du Reel/Centre Pompidou, Paris; Halle fur Kunst Steiermark, Graz, Austria; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and Art Windsor-Essex, Windsor, Canada (in association with Media City Film Festival), among others. His films regularly screen at international film festivals like Black Star, Sundance, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Berlinale, Cinema du Reel, European Media Art Festival, Courtisane, Locarno Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Doc Lisboa, Media City, and cinemas, galleries, and museums like Whitechapel, London; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Reina Sofia, Madrid; LUMA Foundation, Switzerland; National Museum of African American History, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, LA, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and REDCAT, LA. Everson lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is the Commonwealth and Ruffin Foundation Distinguished Professor of Studio Art and director of Studio Arts at the University of Virginia.
Claudrena N. Harold is an award-winning historian whose work examines African American history, labor, and Black cultural politics. Harold is the author of three books, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 1918–1942 (2007), New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South (2013), and When Sunday Comes: Gospel Music in the Soul and Hip-Hop Eras (2020). She is the co-editor, with Louis Nelson, of Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity (2018). She has also produced, with Kevin Jerome Everson, 11 short films under the collective title Black Fire. An extension of her ongoing research into the history of Black student activism at the University of Virginia, these films have screened at numerous international film festivals and art institutions, including Black Star, Berlinale, New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, European Media Art Festival, IKFF Hamburg, Cinema du Reel, Doc Lisboa, BFI London Film Festival, and Edinburgh International Film Festival, among many others. She is currently the associate dean for Social Sciences and Edward Stettinius Professor of History at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
ACCESSIBILITY
Conversations at the Edge events have live captions (CART). The Gene Siskel Film Center is fully ADA accessible and its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For other accessibility requests, please visit saic.edu/access or write cate@saic.edu.