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Company Line

Kevin Jerome Everson

2009 00:30:00 United StatesEnglishB&W and Color16mm film
Tags:
African-American, City, Documentary, Experimental Film, Family, Labor, Migration, Mixed media, Race

Description

Company Line is a film about one of the first predominately Black neighborhoods in Mansfield, Ohio. The title, Company Line, refers to the name historically used by residents to describe their neighborhood, located on the north side of town close to the old steel mill. The Company Line began during the post–war migration of Blacks from the south to the north in the late 1940’s. The neighborhood was purchased in the early 1970s and its residents were scattered throughout Mansfield. City employees and former residents of the Company Line narrate accounts of past and present.

Cast: Robert Swope, DeCarrio Couley, Deadria Harrington, Loretta Robinson Hilliard, Gerome Cross, Howard Lindsey, Johnny Tanner, Billy Marshall, Curley Lanier.

This title is only availalbe on Broad Daylight and Other Times: Selected Works of Kevin Jerome Everson.

About Kevin Jerome Everson

Kevin Jerome Everson lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the Commonwealth and Ruffin Foundation Distinguished Professor of Studio Art and Director of Studio Arts at the University of Virginia. Recipient of the Guggenheim, Heinz Award in Art and Humanities, Berlin Prize, Alpert Award for Film/Video, Rome Prize, Everson's art practice encompasses photography, printmaking, sculpture and film, 12 award-winning features and over 250 solo and collaborative short form works that screen regularly at international film festivals, cinemas, galleries, museums and art biennials. 

Everson's work has been the subject of retrospectives and solo exhibitions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern/Film, London, Highline, NYC, Cinema du Reel/Centre Pompidou, Paris, Art Windsor-Essex, Windsor, Canada (in association with Media City Film Festival), Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC, Halle fur Kunst Steiermark, Graz, Austria, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art,  Seoul, Glasgow Shorts, Cinematek Brussels, Cork International Film Festival, Visions du Reel, Nyon, and the Harvard Film Archive . His films have been featured at the Whitney Biennial (2008, 2012, 2017), the 2013 Sharjah Biennial, the 2018 Carnegie International, the 2023 Contour Biennale, Mechelen, Belgium and the 2024 Thailand Biennale.  

Everson’s award-winning films regularly screen at international film festivals including Black Star, Sundance, IFFR, Berlinale, Cinema du Reel, EMAF, Courtisane, Locarno, Venice, Toronto, New York Film Festival, BFI/London, Doc Lisboa, True/False, Crossroads, Media City, Indie Memphis, AFI Fest, Chicago International Film Festival, BAFICI, Ann Arbor, Porto Post/Doc, ,Jeonju, cinemas, galleries, museums and public and private art institutions, including Whitechapel, London, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, Museum of Modern Art, NY, Reina Sofia, Madrid, LUMA Foundation, Switzerland, National Museum of African American History, Washington, D.C., MOCA, L.A., Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and REDCAT, Los Angeles. 

A three DVD boxed set, Broad Daylight and Other Times, was released by the Video Data Bank (U.S.) in 2011, and a compilation dedicated to films focusing on the subject of labor, I Really Hear That: Quality Control and Other Works, was released by VDB in summer 2017. The compilation contains the feature film Quality Control (2011), included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

Everson has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, NEA, NEH, Ohio Arts Council, and the Virginia Museum,  grants from the Wexner Center for the Arts, Creative Capital and the Mid-Atlantic, residencies at Mobile Frames/Media City (Windsor/Detroit), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Yaddo and MacDowell Colony, and numerous university fellowships.