Monument is an experimental documentary that pairs chemically altered Super 8mm film footage of the decaying monuments of Presidents Park (Croaker, VA) with original and appropriated community video footage captured at Marcus-David Peters Circle (Richmond, VA) during the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Themes of registration and re-calibration, and metaphor and analogy, are explored through form and content and the distinct features of the historical and contemporary media employed.

Presidents Park was once a ten-acre sculpture park (originally located in Williamsburg, VA) that contained 18- to 20-ft tall white busts of 42 U.S. presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush. The park was foreclosed in 2010 due to financial troubles and the busts were relocated to nearby Croaker, where the crumbling statues still sit, abandoned in an overgrown acreage.

Marcus-David Peters was a Virginia man who was shot and killed by police officer Michael Nyantakyi on May 14, 2018, while Peters, unarmed, was having a mental health crisis. In 2020, during the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, Peters’s death was a focus of local Virginia protests. That summer in Richmond, Virginia, the greenspace surrounding the approximately 60-ft tall Robert E. Lee statue became a vibrant community gathering space. Over several weeks, the statue of Robert E. Lee was reclaimed by protesters and activists and neighbors who collectively transformed it into a living monument. It became a public work of art, a mutual aid center, a place for kids to shoot hoops, a memorial to people who were killed by police, and a space for communal organization and celebration symbolizing positive change and transformation. The circle that held the statue, and this blossoming community vision, was renamed Marcus-David Peters Circle in his honor. That year, The New York Times named the Robert E. Lee monument — in its revised state — as the most influential form of American protest art since World War II. The site of this monument has since been leveled and transformed into an unnamed, non-pedestrian garden.

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Awards:

Jury Award for Creative Achievement

33rd Arizona International Film Festival, Tucson, AZ

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Screenings to Date:

Albany Film Festival, University at Albany, NY

Bethesda Film Fest/Documentary Film Festival, Bethesda, MD

Arizona International Film Festival, Tucson, AZ

Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, Philadelphia, PA

Moviate Underground Film Festival, Harrisburg, PA

MicroActs' Intimate Histories, London, England, UK

Brooklyn Film Festival, Brooklyn, NY

New Jersey International Film Festival, New Brunswick, NJ

Umbria Underground Film Festival, Amelia, Umbria, Italy

Revelation Perth International Film Festival, North Perth, Australia

Alternating Currents Film Festival, Davenport,

Director Biography - Jeremy Drummond

Jeremy Drummond is an artist, filmmaker, field recorder, and film/video programmer who was born in Edmonton, Alberta and grew-up in Vancouver, British Colombia and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Drummond currently lives in Richmond, Virginia where teaches experimental film, video art, and alternative media at the University of Richmond. Rooted in single-channel film and video, Drummond's work is positioned between documentary and experimental media and extends across photography, sound, and installation. At the core of his practice is interdisciplinary research and a commitment to sustained, first-person fieldwork that explores cultural, historical, and socio-political relationships between people and place.

Drummond's work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals worldwide and his films/videos have received awards such as the National Film Board of Canada Award at the Images Festival (Toronto), Best Experimental Video at the Reeling: Chicago Lesbian & Gay International Film Festival, the People's Choice Award at the New Forms Festival (Vancouver), and the No Budget Award at the Cinematexas Festival of International Film & Video (Austin). He has received grants and fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts, National Film Board of Canada, and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. His work has been featured and/or reviewed in magazines, journals, and newspapers including Art Papers, Cabinet, Canadian Architect, Frieze, NRC Handelsblad, Prefix Photo, SEAMUS, the Washington Post, and The Wire: Adventures in Sound & Music.

Drummond's films and videos are distributed internationally by LIMA (Amsterdam), Videographe (Montreal), Video Pool Inc. (Winnipeg), Vtape (Toronto), and The Film-maker's Cooperative/The New American Cinema Group (NYC). His printed works are/have been available from Art Metropole (Toronto), Printed Matter Inc. (NYC), and the New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC).

In addition to his solo work, Drummond works extensively with artist David Poolman as Never Met A Stranger -- a collaborative platform for the production of art and experimental media, a publisher of vernacular arts and culture, and an ongoing archive of field recordings, interviews, and documentary resources that collectively explore relationships between perception and representation, industry and the environment, and landscape and culture throughout central Appalachia and the rural North American south.

Drummond is the organizer and curator of the Frames of Reference annual program of artists' film and video. With support from t he University of Richmond's Department of Art & Art History, University Museums, and School of Arts & Sciences; Frames of Reference showcases artists and artworks that resist conventions and ideologies of mainstream media; explore creative, innovative approaches to narrative and experiments in time-based media; and embrace unique viewpoints, perspectives, or frames of reference. Participating filmmakers include: Angelo Madsen Minax, JJJJJerome Ellis, Jesse McLean, Steve Reinke, Deborah Stratman, JP Sniadecki, Kevin Jerome Everson, Brett Story, Tiffany Sia, Sky Hopinka, and others.