three fold special section—fall 2026
Media City Film Festival & Trinosophes Projects Present Three Free Events Celebrating Kevin Jerome Everson’s Newest Celestial Film Made in Metro Detroit
October–November 2026Media City Film Festival (MCFF) and Trinosophes Projects are thrilled to host internationally acclaimed African American filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson in Detroit and East Lansing for three exciting free public events celebrating the filmmaker’s extraordinary body of work. These engagements are the culmination of a two-year collaboration supported by the Knight Arts Foundation, extending MCFF’s unique history of cross-border work in the region, and resulting in the world premiere preview of Everson’s new celestial film Gises (2026), created in Metro Detroit.
“Kevin Jerome Everson is a towering figure in contemporary moving image art. Since the 1990s he has completed more than 300 films, quietly assembling a remarkable and expansive record of Black life, labour, history and experience. He is in the same echelon as directors such as Oscar Micheaux, William Greaves, Charles Burnett, and other pioneers, but is blazing his own trail, with a staggering body of films and artworks—the impact and influence of which are yet to be fully recognized,” says Oona Mosna, Artistic Director of Media City Film Festival. “This May, his films had a solo screening at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles. MCFF has collaborated with Everson extensively over the years, commissioning projects and screening more than 50 of his films in Windsor–Detroit. This new work is at once both deeply local and cosmic in scale. We are excited that regional audiences will be the first to see it.”
Thursday, October 8, 3–6 p.m.
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium
Detroit Public Library–Main Branch
5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202
Free admission
Introduction by Media City Film Festival.
Film screening curated by MCFF Artistic Director Oona Mosna.
Conversation between Kevin Jerome Everson and Yasmina Price.
Partners: Warren Astronomical Society & NOVA24 Photo + Film Festival.
[Link to full program]
STARTSHINE & CLAY: The Films of Kevin Jerome Everson
Friday, October 9, 5–7 p.m.
Abrams Planetarium
Michigan State University
755 Science Rd, East Lansing, MI 48824
Free admission
Film screening curated by MCFF Artistic Director Oona Mosna.
Kevin Jerome Everson in conversation with Yasmina Price.
Partners: Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.
[Link to full program]
Thu. Oct. 15 • Thu. Oct. 22 • Sat. Oct. 24 • Thu. Nov. 5 • Sat. Nov. 7 • Thu. Nov. 12 • Sat. Nov. 14
On view 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium
Detroit Public Library–Main Branch
5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202
Free and open to the public.
[Link to full program]
ABOUT KEVIN JEROME EVERSON
Kevin Jerome Everson (USA) is an artist and filmmaker born in Mansfield, Ohio in 1965. He has completed more than 300 solo and collaborative shorts and feature-length films since 1997, quietly assembling one of the most remarkable collections of contemporary African American life ever committed to cinema. Everson’s films frequently depict Black working-class communities, stretching across a variety of themes and subjects including migration, illusion, astronomy, human kinetics, entomology, musicology, ornithology, historical reenactment, and the folktale. He received a BFA from the University of Akron and an MFA from Ohio University (1990). His films have been exhibited widely at festivals, museums, and galleries internationally, including Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, BlackStar Film Festival, New York Film Festival, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Toronto International Film Festival, Walker Art Center, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Locarno Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. He has received retrospectives at Cinéma du Réel, Centre Pompidou, Harvard Film Archive, Tate Modern, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul, Visions du Réel, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Media City Film Festival. His work has been featured at the 2008, 2012, and 2017 Whitney Biennials, the 2013 Sharjah Biennial, the 2018 Carnegie International, the 2023 Contour Biennale, and the 2024 Thailand Biennale. He has received an American Academy in Rome Prize (2002), a Herb Alpert Award (2012), a Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities (2019), an American Academy in Berlin Prize (2020), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants and commissions from Creative Capital, Just Films/Ford Foundation and Sundance Art of Non-Fiction. Media City Film Festival has screened more than 50 films by Everson since 2009. He lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is the Commonwealth and Ruffin Foundation Distinguished Professor of Studio Art and Director of Studio Arts at the University of Virginia.
Kevin Jerome Everson in conversation with Yasmina Price.
Partners: Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum.
[Link to full program]
GISES: A New Celestial Film Installation by Kevin Jerome Everson
Thu. Oct. 15 • Thu. Oct. 22 • Sat. Oct. 24 • Thu. Nov. 5 • Sat. Nov. 7 • Thu. Nov. 12 • Sat. Nov. 14
On view 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium
Detroit Public Library–Main Branch
5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202
Free and open to the public.
[Link to full program]
ABOUT KEVIN JEROME EVERSON
Kevin Jerome Everson (USA) is an artist and filmmaker born in Mansfield, Ohio in 1965. He has completed more than 300 solo and collaborative shorts and feature-length films since 1997, quietly assembling one of the most remarkable collections of contemporary African American life ever committed to cinema. Everson’s films frequently depict Black working-class communities, stretching across a variety of themes and subjects including migration, illusion, astronomy, human kinetics, entomology, musicology, ornithology, historical reenactment, and the folktale. He received a BFA from the University of Akron and an MFA from Ohio University (1990). His films have been exhibited widely at festivals, museums, and galleries internationally, including Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, BlackStar Film Festival, New York Film Festival, HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, Toronto International Film Festival, Walker Art Center, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Locarno Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. He has received retrospectives at Cinéma du Réel, Centre Pompidou, Harvard Film Archive, Tate Modern, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul, Visions du Réel, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Media City Film Festival. His work has been featured at the 2008, 2012, and 2017 Whitney Biennials, the 2013 Sharjah Biennial, the 2018 Carnegie International, the 2023 Contour Biennale, and the 2024 Thailand Biennale. He has received an American Academy in Rome Prize (2002), a Herb Alpert Award (2012), a Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities (2019), an American Academy in Berlin Prize (2020), a Guggenheim Fellowship, and grants and commissions from Creative Capital, Just Films/Ford Foundation and Sundance Art of Non-Fiction. Media City Film Festival has screened more than 50 films by Everson since 2009. He lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he is the Commonwealth and Ruffin Foundation Distinguished Professor of Studio Art and Director of Studio Arts at the University of Virginia.