The Island of St. Matthews
Director Kevin Jerome Everson
Countries United States
Duration 70 min
Synopsis
The Island of Saint Matthews is a 16mm feature film about the loss of family history, in the form of heirlooms and photographs, and the social and physical impact of a natural disaster--the flood of the Tombigbee River in 1973-- on a community. Years ago filmmaker Kevin Jerome Eversonasked his aunt about old family photographs. Her reply—that “we lost them in the flood”was the catalyst for this film, a poem and paean to the citizens of Westport, just west of Columbus, Mississippi, the hometown of the filmmaker’s parents. The film combines interviews and conversations, filmed in front of a church, at a beauty school, on porches and backyards, with sequences of a waterskier on the Tombigbee River; a worker at the lock and dam; a young couple meeting with an insurance agent about flood insurance. The sound of a church bell—in fact an original bronze sculpture made by the filmmaker for the project—intones throughout, interspersed with a spare, elegiac score.
The Island of Saint Matthews is a 16mm feature film about the loss of family history, in the form of heirlooms and photographs, and the social and physical impact of a natural disaster--the flood of the Tombigbee River in 1973-- on a community. Years ago filmmaker Kevin Jerome Eversonasked his aunt about old family photographs. Her reply—that “we lost them in the flood”was the catalyst for this film, a poem and paean to the citizens of Westport, just west of Columbus, Mississippi, the hometown of the filmmaker’s parents. The film combines interviews and conversations, filmed in front of a church, at a beauty school, on porches and backyards, with sequences of a waterskier on the Tombigbee River; a worker at the lock and dam; a young couple meeting with an insurance agent about flood insurance. The sound of a church bell—in fact an original bronze sculpture made by the filmmaker for the project—intones throughout, interspersed with a spare, elegiac score.