Park Lanes

Expertise takes time to accrue, and so it’s only natural that it would take time to appreciate as an outsider. This idea infuses the eight-hour Park Lanes, Everson’s most severe and challenging experiment with cinematic time and process. Adopting the exact parameters of an average American work day, Park Lanes’ duration is comprised of the various specialized procedures undertaken around a cavernous metalwork factory devoted to the assembly of bowling-alley parts—a detail that Everson never clarifies through exposition, preferring instead to obsessively fixate on the micro until it gradually reveals the macro. Within this framework, individual employees—many African-American, though Everson puts an uncharacteristic spotlight on Asian- American and white workers as well—stand out for their impeccable mastery of highly niche processes, yet the absence of a larger context around their work draws attention to the impersonal ruthlessness of such an industrial ecosystem. Shot over the course of a few days but craftily compressed to suggest one typically regimented day, Park Lanes recognizes and elevates some of the personal craft influencing mass production, and takes no shortcuts in doing so.

Harvard Film Archive, Feb. 2018

Film presented as a video installation in the Forum bas, Centre Pompidou from March 15 to 24 2019.