Evento

Acropolis Cinema presents: Tonsler Park

Tonsler Park (Dir. Kevin Jerome Everson, 2017)

Date: September 18, 2018
Time: 7:30pm
Location: Downtown Independent
Address: 251 S. Main St, Los Angeles, CA. 90012

Los Angeles premiere! Co-presented by MUBI!

This portrait of the black staff members in the polling station at Tonsler Park in Charlottesville, Virginia was filmed during the US Presidential Election Day on November 8, 2016, the day when the battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was decided. Kevin Jerome Everson records the staff taking an oath, seeing rows of voters pass as they hand out voting slips, while no one seems aware of the camera that is standing there motionless. Conversations change to hubbub, backs block the cameras view this is democracy in practice and every vote counts.

Everson is a very productive filmmaker who has made countless short and long films about the work culture of black Americans. His choice for this location is not without significance: Tonsler Park is named after Benjamin Tonsler, a local Afro-American school director who continued to teach older Afro-American pupils against the law in the era of segregation. (IFFR)