Spicebush

Everson has previously made an imposing series of experimental short films – also screened in Rotterdam – about the lives and myths of black Americans. Spicebush is also about black America and this film is experimental too, in the sense that it comprises a variety of film styles and is made up of varied fragments. Alongside documentary images about education, work or unemployment and shots of the landscape, there are also dramatised scenes. Some parts are clearly symbolic, while others offer more usual forms of drama or documentary. The film contains beautiful and unusual archive material from a variety of sources. Taste and vision combine to form a beautiful unity in this diversity. One returning motif is a little girl in different disguises and different places. According to the film maker, she has the role of the chorus in a classical drama, providing an aloof commentary. In his unique and idiosyncratic way, Everson looks at the often-unknown history of black Americans. A political film, but the director obviously shuns the traditional form of the realistic documentary. Apparently he wants to emphasise aspects that demand a more complex and basically poetic approach. The title of the film is derived from the butterfly of the State of Mississippi, the ‘spicebush swallowtail’. In the film, Mississippi is a place of origin. The butterfly with the beautiful name stands for innovation and starting afresh. (GjZ)