The films shown at the Centre Pompidou retrospective are quite recent, made between 2002 and 2009. Everson entitled the first cycle (May 13) of his retrospective Broad Daylight and Other Times. The title captures his principal obsession in these films: to show what Zinn calls "history of the people", focusing on the singular experience, often in its relation to reported news (which is the first attempt at writing "authoritative" history). According to (2007, 8'30'', 16mm, B&W), the longest film in the series, relates a number of events through repeated TV footage juxtaposed with the news anchor's report. While the images remain the same, the narrative changes: a tragic drowning of a "Negro man" in Roanoke county, turns out to have been a murder; an accidental fire caused by the explosion of a kerosene tank in an apartment building, which resulted in the death of a "Negro woman", turns out to have been an arson perpetrated by two white males. The video excerpts from news footage alternate with the quotidian gesture of an old man (perhaps the filmmaker's father) going out onto his porch to pick up his daily. We never see him unfold the paper or read the news, but the repetition of the gesture juxtaposed with the replayed TV newscast eloquently comments on the place of the news in one's life, on the construction of history and on personal memory. . . .
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Kevin Everson retrospective
The films shown at the Centre Pompidou retrospective are quite recent, made between 2002 and 2009. Everson entitled the first cycle (May 13) of his retrospective Broad Daylight and Other Times. The title captures his principal obsession in these films: to show what Zinn calls "history of the people", focusing on the singular experience, often in its relation to reported news (which is the first attempt at writing "authoritative" history). According to (2007, 8'30'', 16mm, B&W), the longest film in the series, relates a number of events through repeated TV footage juxtaposed with the news anchor's report. While the images remain the same, the narrative changes: a tragic drowning of a "Negro man" in Roanoke county, turns out to have been a murder; an accidental fire caused by the explosion of a kerosene tank in an apartment building, which resulted in the death of a "Negro woman", turns out to have been an arson perpetrated by two white males. The video excerpts from news footage alternate with the quotidian gesture of an old man (perhaps the filmmaker's father) going out onto his porch to pick up his daily. We never see him unfold the paper or read the news, but the repetition of the gesture juxtaposed with the replayed TV newscast eloquently comments on the place of the news in one's life, on the construction of history and on personal memory. . . .
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