At the Barbican next month this programme mixes canonical masterpieces of experimental cinema, with contemporary films, linked together by their explorations of the monumental within the everyday, confronting memory, community, and identity with intimacy and innovation taking inspiration from Noah Davis's Delusions of Grandeur.
The idea behind Affinities or The Weight of Cinema derives from Goethe’s classic 1809 novel Elective Affinities. The project, playfully adapting Goethe’s artistic-scientific theory of attractions to the practice of exhibiting experimental cinema, is presented in person by filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson and curator Greg de Cuir Jr, who serve as co-curators. Eight programs of international works of film and video art are arranged along various thematic lines that correspond to their shared interests and concerns.
Based on extensive historical research and embodying a strong sense of place, the films of Kevin Jerome Everson combine scripted and documentary moments with a rigorous formalism, with his filmic subjects inspired directly by gestures, tasks, and conditions of working class African American life.
