For more than a decade, University of Virginia colleagues Kevin Jerome Everson, Commonwealth and Ruffin Foundation Distinguished Professor of Studio Art and Director of Studio Arts, and Claudrena N. Harold, Associate Dean for Social Sciences and Edward Stettinius Professor of History, have collaborated on Black Fire, an ongoing body of work devoted to the history and experience of Black life at UVA in Charlottesville. The project grew out of Harold’s research into the political and cultural history of African American students and faculty at the university and her discovery of a fragmentary archive. Together, Harold and Everson began using this archival material as a point of departure, making images where images were absent and bringing Harold’s research into conversation with Everson’s approach to performance, duration, and gesture.

The selection presented here moves between histories of student organizing and institutional change, athletics, gospel, recreation, and the forms of social and cultural exchange that took place within and around the university.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A and conversation with Everson and Harold.

Special thanks to Madeleine Molyneaux, K.J. Relth-Miller, and the Academy Museum.

Films appear courtesy of the filmmakers and Picture Palace Pictures. All films directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold.