Filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson marks one of the few contemporary directors aggressively working to expand the boundaries of the cinematic essay as a narrative mode. Within this sphere as well, Everson's approach to filmmaking waxes unique: it involves building cohesive sequences out of individual components so evocative and poetic that each carries a myriad of connotations and could ostensibly stand on its own; woven together, the sequences enable Everson to meditate extensively on a given theme. With The Golden Age of Fish, Everson takes on a broad subject: the life, sustenance and collective future of the African American population in the U.

S. The director travels to Midwestern Cleveland, Ohio, and looks at black lives from a myriad of angles - sociologically, culturally, economically, historically - while a black geologist narrates several tales of individual African American stories set in Cleveland. The title refers to the "Devonian" period of archaeology, some 417 to 354 million years B.C.

, when fish first began to appear in the area that is now Cleveland.