Weeksville Watch Night: To Linger in the Ordinary

A film program curated by Gervais Marsh exploring the intimacies of ordinary Black life, with a performance by poet Sade Powell.
About this Event

For this edition of Weeksville Watch Night, Weeksville partners with Rada Collective to present To Linger in the Ordinary, a film program curated by Gervais Marsh, Rada’s Criticism and Curatorial Fellow.

Consider the expanse, tensions, and intimacies of ordinary life. Life lived beyond the moments it is framed as spectacular, both in its beauty and its violence. Meaning is made through the exhale and the simple actions of daily life. The entirety of any life, the fullness of Black life, cannot be captured.

Architectures of exceeding harm are carved into the landscape, ingrained in the everyday. Anti-Black realities necessitate a constant negotiation of both the mundane and extravagant scales of injury. Amidst these constraints, the ordinary conjures the complexities of Black life.

The film program thinks alongside scholar Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes. She writes:

“[We, Black people,] are constituted through and by continued vulnerability to overwhelming force though not only known to ourselves and to each other by that force.” That other knowing, that other note, is one that we might call regard.

Through short films by Kevin Jerome Everson, Kahlil I. Pedizisai, and Fronza Woods, To Linger in the Ordinary considers Black life beyond what can be captured by spectacle or injury.

The evening will conclude with a performance by poet Sade Powell and talk balk with Gervais Marsh.

Program

Glenville (2020)

Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson and Kahlil I. Pedizisai

Boyd v Denton (2023)

Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson

According To… (2007)

Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson

Second and Lee (2008)

Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson

Fannie’s Film (1981)

Dir. Fronza Woodsa

Cover Image: Still from Glenville: ©Kevin Jerome Everson & Kahlil I. Pedizisai; courtesy the artists; trilobite-arts DAC; Picture Palace Pictures