Black Fire
6 Episodes
Made as part of an ongoing collaboration between experimental filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson, historian Claudrena N. Harold, and the students and alumni of the University of Virginia, these unclassifiable, poetic short films explore the ways in which Black students have transformed the university—politically, socially, culturally, and intellectually—from the 1960s through the present. Creatively employing reenactment, interviews, music, and performance, Everson and Harold pay tribute to the unsung trailblazers who paved the way for greater equality on the UVA campus while bringing the university’s history of racial and social struggle into dialogue with the present.
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Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold Interview
Episode 1
This interview with directors Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold was recorded in 2021.
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20:19Episode 2
Sugarcoated Arsenic
Episode 2
Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold • 2014 • United States
Starring Erin Stewart, Vivian GordonSUGARCOATED ARSENIC is a cinematic exploration of African American intellectual, social, and political life at the University of Virginia during the 1970s. Starring Erin Stewart a...
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We Demand
Episode 3
Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold • 2016 • United States
Starring Ricky Goldman, Richard Warner, Ryan LeachWE DEMAND tells the story of the anti–Vietnam War movement from the perspective of James R. Roebuck, a Northern-born African American man who studied at the Universi...
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04:39Episode 4
How Can I Ever Be Late
Episode 4
Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold • 2017 • United States
Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena Harold imagine a group of African American students from the University of Virginia greeting Sly and the Family Stone at the Charlottesville airport in 1973.
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09:56Episode 5
Fastest Man in the State
Episode 5
Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold • 2017 • United States
Starring Kent MerrittKent Merritt waxes poetic about being one of the first four Black scholarship athletes at the University of Virginia.
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09:25Episode 6
Black Bus Stop
Episode 6
Directed by Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold • 2019 • United States
Students reclaim a popular gathering spot on the campus of the University of Virginia.