Lago Gatún

Kevin Jerome Everson’s latest feature-length film, shot in black-and-white 16mm, is a minimalist odyssey that traverses the waterway between the Earth’s two great oceans. The artist travels through the Panama Canal, filming 10-minute reels of 16mm to create an almost abstract journey modulated in time through the light and dark of the opening and closing locks. Alternating with submerged darkness, we observe the beauty of the landscape, and the global trade that the canal was built to facilitate; bringing to mind that its American engineers imposed US segregation laws on the canal’s Jamaican migrant workforce. (BFI / Experimenta)