Madeleine Molyneaux

Titled after the United States Federal Court decree that forced the closure of the infamously overcrowded Ohio State Reformatory, Everson’s film is a radical transformation of the prison and popular filming location, at once abstracting its interiors into monochrome patterns and textures, and reanimating the ghostly traces of its real and fictive former inhabitants.

Kevin Jerome Everson’s unique observational gaze collapses Hollywood histrionics and American carceral history into one frame, as a Moscow prison break scene from Andrew Marlowe’s original screenplay for Air Force One—read in affectless voiceover on the film’s soundtrack—is offset by handheld footage taken in the Ohio State Reformatory, where the scene was filmed.

"First Team Offense" is made up of Bertha Everson's great grandchildren. Featuring a custom helmet created by Becca McCharen-Tran/Chromat. A short film that "considers family ties and America’s favorite sport." - MoMA

A short film that "channels the 1966 Cleveland Uprising." - MoMA

If You Don't Watch the Way You Move features Derek "Dripp" Whitfield Jr. and Taymond "choSkii" Hughes of the music group BmE composing and recording their latest composition, "Shiesty", in the Columbus, Mississippi studio of Jermaine "Country Blakk" Brown only to be interrupted by a John Cage score.

Two University of Virginia workers share a drink and conversation at a local nightclub. One worker is a phlebotomist and the other is a former EKG technician who has relocated from New Mexico and works now in the university cafeteria.Starring Ricky Goldman and Richard Cooper. Inspired by the 1973 film "The Mack" starring Max Julian and Richard Pryor.

The artist travels through the Panama Canal, filming 10-minute reels of 16mm to create an almost abstract journey modulated in time through the light and dark of the opening and closing locks. Alternating with submerged darkness, we observe the beauty of the landscape, and the global trade that the canal was built to facilitate; bringing to mind that its American engineers imposed US segregation laws on the canal’s Jamaican migrant workforce.

Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.

Structured as a labyrinth-like game and inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Aleph is a travelogue of experience, a dreamer's journey through the lives, experiences, stories and musings of protagonists spanning ten countries and five continents.

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

A 16mm film about an Airman training to be a pilot at Columbus Air Force Base, 14th Flying Training Wing, in Columbus, Mississippi.

The July 2, 2019 solar eclipse, filmed in 100% totality, over the Chilean coast, in 16mm black and white. Condor is the national bird of Chile.

Students reclaim a popular gathering spot on the campus of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

A beautiful actress struggles to connect with her disfigured co-star on the set of a European auteur's English-language debut.

A collection of sfumato-tinged bottles shot with tight framing and shallow focus provides a mesmeric portrait of a man and a community in Northeast Ohio, where "Brown and Clear" commonly refer to "Bourbon and Vodka".

The true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s to 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory, in Dawson City, located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

This film presents three generations of the Carr family waxing poetically about living and working in Salisbury, North Carolina.

Tonsler Park observes, in black and white 16mm, the democratic process in action, at Charlottesville, Virginia voting precincts, over the course of Election Day, November 8, 2016.

KJE captures the grand finale of Emancipation Day, the annual Detroit River Fireworks, in 2014. Founded by Walter Perry, Emancipation Day was celebrated in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, every August 1 from 1932–1967 to mark the anniversary of British Parliment’s abolishment of slavery in 1834. Also known as The Greatest Freedom Show on Earth, the festival was large enough at one time to double the city’s population. As Emancipation Day became increasingly associated with the Freedom Movement across the border, the Windsor Police Department and city council began to push against the event, eventually culminating in its cancellation in reaction to the Detroit rebellion in 1967.

It Seems to Hang On is based on the true story of the serial killers Alton Coleman and Debra Brown, a young Black couple who cut a violent path beginning in the summer of 1984 through the American Midwest (Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin). The dialogue spoken in the film is inspired and based on lyrics from the American soul duo (and couple) Ashford and Simpson's 1979 hit song "It Seems to Hang On".

A Coney Island-inspired, densely-layered visually dynamic documentary portrait of the life and times of the original Nathan's Famous, created in 1916 by filmmaker Lloyd Handwerker's grandparents, Nathan and Ida Handwerker. 30 years in the making, Famous Nathan interweaves decades-spanning archival footage, family photos and home movies, an eclectic soundtrack and never-before-heard audio from Nathan: his only interview, ever as well as compelling, intimate and hilarious interviews with the dedicated band of workers, not at all shy at offering opinions, memories and the occasional tall tale.

This immersive eight-hour documentary follows workers in a Virginia factory over the course of an entire day, from clock-in to clock-out. Long, unbroken sequences of assembly and fabrication focus on the bodies of African American and Vietnamese American workers, while both mobile and fixed cameras transform their acts into pure movement. Everson’s “shift-film” adjusts the frame on race, class, and labor, celebrating the everyday and imbuing working bodies with new dimensions.

Two magicians in Philadelphia practice their slight of hand tricks.

Employees of the Cleveland Water Department on the hunt for leaks in the infrastructure in Cuyahoga County.

Two gentlemen making a living hustling metal in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ming of Harlem: Twenty One Storeys in the Air is an only-in-New-York account of Ming, Al, and Antoine Yates, who cohabited in a high-rise social housing apartment at Drew-Hamilton complex in Harlem for several years until 2003, when news of their dwelling caused a public outcry and collective outpouring of disbelief. On the discovery that Ming was a 500-pound pound Tiger and Al a seven-foot alligator, their story took on an astonishing dimension. The film frames Yates’s recollections with a poetic study of Ming and Al, the predators’ presence combined with a text by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, reimagining the circumstances of the wild inside, animal names, strange territories, and human-animal relations.

Years ago, Kevin Jerome Everson asked his aunt where their old family photos had gone. Her answer - ‘they were all lost in the flood’ - sparked this trip to meet the inhabitants of Westport, a small town just to the west of Columbus, Mississippi. They reminisce about the great flood of the Tombigbee River in 1973, when some people lost everything. Many heirlooms and photos of the Eversons were swallowed up, and part of the family history disappeared.

Charlie Rankin, recently released from prison, seeks vengeance for his jail-house mentor William "The Buddha" Pettigrew. Along the way, he meets the ethereal, yet streetwise, Florence Jane. They embark on a unlikely road trip, careening towards an unlikely redemption and uncertain resolution.

Charlie Rankin, recently released from prison, seeks vengeance for his jail-house mentor William "The Buddha" Pettigrew. Along the way, he meets the ethereal, yet streetwise, Florence Jane. They embark on a unlikely road trip, careening towards an unlikely redemption and uncertain resolution.

A film about Black cowgirls and cowboys preparing themselves for the rodeo event of calf roping. Filmed in Lafayette, Louisiana and Natchez, Mississippi the title refers to the type of rope they use to capture fast calves.

This short is based on Chester Himes’s novel Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and its adaptation for the screen by Ossie Davis in 1970. The cotton in the novel and film comes from the region around Columbus, Mississippi. Shot in noir-style, the film focuses on the scene when detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones interrogate Lo-Boy, an artist/hustler, about the event around the demise of his friend Early Riser.

This short is based on Chester Himes’s novel Cotton Comes to Harlem (1965) and its adaptation for the screen by Ossie Davis in 1970. The cotton in the novel and film comes from the region around Columbus, Mississippi. Shot in noir-style, the film focuses on the scene when detectives Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones interrogate Lo-Boy, an artist/hustler, about the event around the demise of his friend Early Riser.

Centred on a scene from Tennessee Williams’s play Kingdom of Earth (1968). Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus. Filmed as if it were a stage play, the title character, Chicken of Kingdom, struggles with how people view him.

Centred on a scene from Tennessee Williams’s play Kingdom of Earth (1968). Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus. Filmed as if it were a stage play, the title character, Chicken of Kingdom, struggles with how people view him.

Rita Larson's Boy portrays ten actors auditioning for the role of Rollo Larson in the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son. Rita Larson's Boy is one of three films included in the Tombigbee Chronicles Number Two. The series of films are based on famous people and objects from Columbus, Mississippi. The actor Nathaniel Taylor, raised in Columbus, portrayed Rollo Larson (Rita Larson's boy) in the television series Sanford and Son. Tombigbee is the river the runs though Columbus.

Rita Larson's Boy portrays ten actors auditioning for the role of Rollo Larson in the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son. Rita Larson's Boy is one of three films included in the Tombigbee Chronicles Number Two. The series of films are based on famous people and objects from Columbus, Mississippi. The actor Nathaniel Taylor, raised in Columbus, portrayed Rollo Larson (Rita Larson's boy) in the television series Sanford and Son. Tombigbee is the river the runs though Columbus.

Quality Control consists of a series of 16mm single take shots filmed in the summer of 2010,over a two day period, in a dry cleaners facility in Pritchard, Alabama, near Mobile, Quality Control exhibits the acts as well the conditions around labor and showcases, in Everson's words "the fine folks of Alabama producing a superior product." It is similar stylistically, in form and rhythm, to certain scenarios in Everson's award-winning and critically acclaimed previous films, including Erie (IFFR 2010) and in thematic concerns to several other short form works which follow the daily, quotidian tasks of workers in rest and in motion, and is an oblique sequel, ten years hence, to Everson's Creative Capital granted project A Week in the Hole (2001), which focused on an employee's adjustment to materials, time, space and personnel. - Written by Madeleine Molyneaux, producer

Erie consists of a series of single take vignettes in and around communities near Lake Erie that relate to Black migration in the USA, contemporary conditions, folks concentrating on the task at hand, theater and famous art objects.