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The details of cinematic mastery
African American film maker panel comes to Kenilworth Square
By Danielle Stevens
The three cinematic masters came together to discuss several topics, including the debunking or qualifying of “cinema vérité” (a form of documentary filmmaking), authenticating tales to a highly skeptical white audience and directing actors.
On October 4 highly esteemed filmmakers Charles Burnett, Kevin Jerome Everson and Iverson White collected for a panel discussion entitled “The Vérité Impulse in the films of Burnett, Everson and White.” It was hosted in a quiet 4th floor room at the Kenilworth Square East building to an audience of about 50, and was moderated by Professor Portia Cobb of the UWM Community Media Project, a division of the film department in the Peck School of the Arts. The three cinematic masters came together to discuss several topics, including the debunking or qualifying of “cinema vérité” (a form of documentary filmmaking), authenticating tales to a highly skeptical white audience and directing actors.
Charles Burnett holds a masters degree in film, theater and television from UCLA, and is a recipient of the MacArthur fellowship, an award given to people to continue their promising work. Burnett was also honored with a Berlin film prize and preservation with the National Film Registry for his 1977 debut film, “Killer of Sheep”. He has since gone on to direct over 20 films, including “Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation.” Charles is soft-spoken person, eager to teach and inform people. Throughout the panel his children would call his cell phone asking for directions, but his personality remained pleasant.
Charles uses vérité to try to “create a myth and distort reality.” When doing commercial film work for companies, Burnett describes that he has to market to certain people. “You don’t have the luxury of saying this film is for me.” He has also made films in Africa with non-actors. Although he had to “wait” for their performances, they came out as extremely natural.
Iverson White also holds an MFA from UCLA and is now an Associate Professor of Film at UWM. His films have been viewed on PBS and the film festival circuit, and have won numerous accolades, including the Donald Davis and Jack Nicholson Award for screenwriting and the Paul Robeson Award from the Newark Museum. Iverson has a deep voice and thoughtful character alluding to his theater and poetry background. He discussed how the language in his films is very important, and thus there is no room for ad-libbing. He went on to talk about his fascination with the “persistence of racism,” and how with his films he tries to “subvert the stereotypes,” such as the role of the “black mammy.”
Kevin Jerome Everson is a talented multi-artist who specializing in film, photography, sculpture and painting. His film and artwork “respond to daily materials, tasks and gestures of people of African descent.” His films have been showcased in many festivals, such as Sundance, Lisbon, and Portugal. He has been the recipient of a myriad of fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship. Kevin is slightly younger and has experience in street photography, which has helped facilitate his use of cinema vérité as a formal device, as well as letting actors “do what they normally do,“ to create an unaffected performance. He explained that there is a debate of what “black film” is and that there are different landscapes, regions, classes and backgrounds. One person’s reality isn’t another’s.
All three filmmakers presented new films (many of which are viewable from libraries or from their websites, online), and stated that they are involved in many future projects. They were extremely accommodating to the audience and it was an immense fortune to have some of the most talented, respected and honored filmmakers in the world teach us about the way they think.
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