| GKEVIN JEROME EVERSON’S two-minute film Something Else (2007) begins with a bit of worn color 16 mm—evidently shot for a local television-news station, perhaps sometime around 1970—depicting an interview with Miss Black Roanoke, Virginia, a young woman in a scoop-necked russet gown, with a sparkling tiara perched atop her Afro. The footage seems battered by time. |  |
From Left:
Kevin Jerome Everson, Something Else, 2007, still from a color film in 16 mm, 2 minutes.
Right:
Kevin Jerome Everson, Old Cat, 2009, still from a black-and-white film in 16 mm, 11 minutes 25 seconds.
KEVIN JEROME EVERSON’S two-minute film Something Else (2007) begins with a bit of worn color 16 mm—evidently shot for a local television-news station, perhaps sometime around 1970—depicting an interview with Miss Black Roanoke, Virginia, a young woman in a scoop-necked russet gown, with a sparkling tiara perched atop her Afro. The footage seems battered by time. The sound drops out, more than once, and split-second bits of dialogue repeat, as if two prints had been badly spliced together. Following some initial questions, the awkward white male reporter asks the beauty queen whether she’d prefer to be in a racially integrated event or remain in segregated pageants. “Well, I don’t think it’s a matter of preference,” she responds, smiling sweetly into the reporter’s microphone. “I think it’s a matter really of whether I was to win or lose, you understand. Because in the other pageant—I call it the regular pageant—the black girl doesn’t have much of a chance of winning. I hate to say it, but it’s kind of true. It’s not that it’s segregated, but it’s necessary to segregate, in order to give black girls a chance to feel . . . ‘up.’” As soon as she utters that final word, Everson’s film cuts to silent images of a more recent African-American pageant queen, waving from atop a parade float, shot from a low angle on digital video, artificially distressed to imitate the flaring light leaks at the end of a roll of 16-mm film.
