three fold special section—fall 2026
GISES A New Celestial Film by Kevin Jerome Everson
On view 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Thu. Oct. 15 • Thu. Oct. 22 • Sat. Oct. 24
Thu. Nov. 5 • Sat. Nov. 7 • Thu. Nov. 12 • Sat. Nov. 14
Clara Stanton Jones Friends Auditorium
Detroit Public Library | Main Branch
5201 Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI 48202
Globally recognized for his prolific body of work featuring over 300 films, Kevin Jerome Everson has developed a distinctive moving-image practice attentive to labor, gesture, duration, and the textures of everyday life. Gises (2026) is Everson’s newest celestial film, shot from the unique vantage point of metro Detroit, and is the ninth work in his ongoing body of films devoted to celestial phenomena. Created at the Stargate Observatory in southeastern Michigan with generous assistance from the Warren Astronomical Society, this new film extends Everson’s decade-long engagement with all things superlunary: the sun, the moon, eclipses, and other stellar phenomena.
Working with Super 8 and 16mm Bolex cameras fastened to Stargate’s Kalinowski-Khula telescope, Everson observes the heavens through the material and optical possibilities of photochemical film, tracing the sun’s movement through changing registers of light, duration, and perception. The title Gises comes from the Potawatomi language, referring to the sun but also encompassing the moon and seasonal changes tracked through celestial cycles that have guided traditional harvesting and life in this region for millennia.
This project is made possible by many funders and partners, including the Knight Arts Foundation, Detroit Public Library, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council. Gises (2026) is a production of trilobite-arts DAC and Picture Palace Pictures. All films appear courtesy of the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures. Images © Kevin Jerome Everson, courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, and Picture Palace Pictures.
Special thanks to Madeleine Molyneaux, Picture Palace Pictures, Cully Sommers, Detroit Public Library, and Warren Astronomical Society / Stargate Observatory members Jonathan Kade, Riyad Matti, Adrian Bradley, Mark Kedzior, and Jeff MacLeod.
Gises, 2026
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, Director of Studio Arts, University of Virginia.
ABOUT YASMINA PRICE
Yasmina Price is a New York–based writer and film programmer. She is devoted to visual culture from the African continent and diaspora, anticolonial cinema, and the experimental work of women filmmakers. Her programming has been featured at Anthology Film Archives, Light Industry, Maysles Documentary Center, e-flux, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Pan African Film & Arts Festival, and the National Gallery of Art. Her writing has appeared in edited volumes and museum catalogues, and has been published in the Nation, Criterion’s Current, the Baffler, MUBI’s Notebook, Hammer & Hope, Film Quarterly, World Records Journal and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Black Studies and Film & Media Studies from Yale University.
ABOUT OONA MOSNA
Oona Mosna (Canada) is an artist, author, curator, and the artistic director of Media City Film Festival since 2004. She has organized thousands of screenings, retrospectives, and exhibitions with artists including Yoko Ono, Mati Diop, Michael Snow, Barbara Hammer, Sergei Parajanov, Carolee Schneemann, VALIE EXPORT, and hundreds more at venues including the Presidential Palace and National Museum of Fine Arts (Chile), Toronto International Film Festival, Detroit Institute of Arts, Walker Art Center, Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, and countless other festivals, museums, and grassroots venues worldwide. As an accomplished producer, she has commissioned dozens of films which have screened at Tate Modern, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Venice Film Festival, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, The Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Academy Museum of Motion Picture Arts, New York Film Festival, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, as well as her living room, kitchen, and backyard. She lives and works in Windsor–Detroit and internationally.
Lead image: Portrait © Oona Mosna courtesy Media City Film Festival.