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SEE MORE Click here to watch a film by Kevin Everson, commissioned by CineVegas, that explores the Nevada city. |
Introductory filmmaking class is a rite of passage for the arts community at UVA. In the class, students shoot original works, and edit their own cuts of a “mondo” film based on the techniques of bawdy filmmaker John Waters. Another of the course’s draws is Kevin Everson, the famously foul-mouthed professor who is…well, famous in the film world.
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The greatest American who ever lived, according to Kevin Everson? Nat Turner. “There should be a Nat Turner holiday. We write about Spartacus, but why not recognize one of our own?” |
An accomplished photographer, sculptor, painter and filmmaker, Everson grew up in one of the first predominantly black neighborhoods in Mansfield, Ohio. He writes that his “films and artwork are about responding to daily materials, conditions, tasks and gestures of people of African descent.” The working class themes he incorporates in his work have earned him a place at museums from the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney, and at festivals from Sundance to the International Film Festival Rotterdam—one of the “big five” festivals—which recently commissioned Everson to create a series of films about Africa. He also has Guggenheim and NEA fellowships to his name.
As a kid, “I think my cousins and brothers and I worked on a comic book or something like that,” he says. “But I wasn’t very good at it. Mostly it was stuff like Spider-Man, copying artists like Gil Kane. But I didn’t really do anything with art until I got to college. I was kind of a jock.”
