THE GOLDEN AGE OF FISH (2008) with Kevin Everson, Lydia Moyer and William Wyler
Saturday, 4:15 pm, Regal Downtown #3
Director: Kevin Everson
Writer: Kevin Everson
Cinematographer: Kevin Everson
Cast: Lisa Hunt, Carman Higginbotham
Running Time: 60 min
The Golden Age of Fish is an experimental feature film that interweaves various fragmentary narratives about the landscape of Cleveland, Ohio, from its prehistoric past to the present. An African American woman geologist is the excavator of Cleveland’s past, and our protagonist. The title references the geologist’s specimens, Devonian age Cleveland shale; it was the Devonian period (417 to 354 million years ago), when Cleveland had a golden age, and many new kinds of fish appeared. The film is is a collage of fragments–scripted scenes and historic news footage, black and white and color–interwoven suggestively and poetically. “Everson tells without frills, but you can’t call it minimal. The images, occasionally no more than fragments, are too poetic and atmospheric for that. He also has a theme all of his own. To put it simply: the life and survival of the black population of America” (Rotterdam Film Festival).
Shown with two short films by Kevin Everson’s colleagues in the UVA Art Department, Lydia Moyer and William Wylie. Hyacinth (Moyer, 2008, 8 min.) revolves around a 2008 trip to the site of Jonestown, Guyana. Secret (Wylie, 9 min.) was filmed in the old Enola Gay hanger Wendover Air Base in Nevada.
