Event Details
In person: filmmakers Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold conversation, moderated by filmmaker Cauleen Smith
Since 2013, artist Kevin Jerome Everson and author and historian Claudrena N. Harold have cooperated on a series of lyrical short films—13 to date—that explore Black intellectual, social, and political life at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where both are professors. Collectively titled Black Fire, these works highlight the spaces where Black students have studied, learned, and organized through the years, including the school's student-run newspaper and a bus stop that became a locus for collective action.
Through short films spotlighting figures such as Paulette Jones Morant, one of the first Black woman scholastic athletes at UVA, and Vivian Gordon, the director of UVA’s Black Studies program from 1974–1980, Black Fire creates significant space for otherwise under-the-radar figures. Employing... interviews and reenactment, often casting their students as performers, Everson and Harold's films bring the history of UVA, as well as the historical experiences of Black students and faculty across the US, into meaningful conversation with the present day. Filmmakers Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold appear in conversation after the films, moderated by filmmaker Cauleen Smith. Special thanks to Madeleine Molyneaux, Sam Raphael, and Now Instant Image Hall.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
Films appear courtesy of the filmmakers and Picture Palace Pictures. All films directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold.
Sugarcoated Arsenic
2013 | 20 min | USA | Black-and-white | Sound | Not Rated | DCP
Pride
2021 | 7 min | USA | Color | Sound | Not Rated | DCP
Accidental Athlete
2023 | 7 min | USA | Black-and-white | Sound | Not Rated | DCP
70kg
2017 | 2 min | USA | Black-and-white | Silent | Not Rated | DCP
How Can I Ever Be Late
2017 | 5 min | USA | Black-and-white | Sound | Not Rated | DCP
Gospel Hill
2022 | 5 min | USA | Black-and-white | Sound | Not Rated | DCP
Black Bus Stop
2019 | 9 min | USA | Color | Sound | Not Rated | DCP
Total program runtime: approx. 57 min