Everson turns the lens on loss

When Kevin Jerome Everson wanted to make a film about loss, he had to look no further than Vanessa Jordon, the girl he dated when he was 14.

“Vanessa,” a three-minute film that is Everson’s third to be included in the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, deals with her murder at age 25 by a stalker.

Images in “Vanessa,” captured in film, video and still photography, include her father and boyfriend discussing her death, and a recurring image that evokes a Michelangelo painting of the Madonna and child.

Everson, assistant professor of studio art at U.Va., sees his films, which deal with working-class black American culture and the African diaspora, as art, not storytelling. The films have been shown at festivals in the United States and Europe.

“It’s up to the viewer to put these relationships together [in the way] that he or she chooses to. I don’t really have conclusions. A viewer’s own background has its own little narrative or non-narrative of what’s happening. I try to make the films interesting to look at,” he said.

Everson, who is also a sculptor and photographer, teaches two semesters of a filmmaking course. Students work in crews on projects he creates as problem-solving exercises, using cameras Everson repairs and maintains himself.

Everson is now working on a feature-length film, his first, about teenage school bus drivers in Mississippi in 1959, negotiating second-hand buses, fixing them and picking up kids. “It’s also about a particular place in history,” said Everson, whose father and uncle drove buses themselves. The film will be shot in black and white, to evoke Civil Rights footage. “It’s a volatile moment, right after Brown,” he said. “There’s a sense of unsettlement and hope.”