Official Competition 2019

Black Bus Stop

Kevin Jerome Everson y Claudrena N. Harold I 2018 I 9'

SYNOPSIS

Students reclaim a popular gathering spot on the campus of the University of Virginia. Sacred ground. A transcendent space of communion where young people could be found listening to music, talking politics, dancing, flirting, living in their fullness. This film pays tribute to the Black Bus Stop, an informal yet iconic gathering site for black students at the University of Virginia during the 1980s and 1990s.

BIOGRAPHY

Kevin Jerome Everson y Claudrena N. Harold

KEVIN JEROME EVERSON (Ohio, 1965). He holds an MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron, and is a professor of art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Everson was awarded the 2012 Alpert Film/Video Award. His nine winning and critically acclaimed films and over 150 short films have been screened and exhibited internationally at film festivals, commercial venues, biennials, museums, galleries, and art institutions.

CLAUDRENA N. HAROLD (USA) is Professor of Africana Studies and History at the University of Virginia. She has been collaborating with Kevin Jerome Emerson since 2013 and they have directed several films together.

Multimedia

Critical text

In a spot of the university in the middle of campus, various students are found chatting and smiling. It would appear to be a typical student hang-out spot if we chose not to acknowledge the role of blackness and race in Charlottesville, VA; a city with a long history of racism, and notoriously home to violent attacks by white supremacists on August 11 and 12 of 2017.This particular spot on the University of Virginia’s campus is not just any spot. In the 1980s and 90s, this spot began to be referred to as the “Black Bus Stop”, as it was and is a space on campus where black students often congregate. They continuously and organically meet here to study, listen to music, flirt, chat, rap or dance. In this admirable film, directors Claudrena N. harold and Kevin Jerome Everson pay tribute to the to the collectivity of the yesterday and today. Black Bus Stop outlines the inextricable and essential connection between spaces and histories. FERNANDO VÍLCHEZ

Technical Sheet