“We got a lot of heavy lifting to do this semester. Welcome to the Gutter.” It’s hardly the greeting you might expect on the first day of a class. But Kevin Everson is not in the business of delivering the expected. In this case, “The Gutter” is a point of pride. It’s the name he has bestowed on his U.Va. cinema community. The class included a filmmaking experience that linked students with Everson and his co-writer, Claudrena Harold, Associate Professor in the Corcoran Department of History and well known director Kahlil Pedizisai for a film about James R. Roebuck, who became U.Va.’s first African American Student Council President in 1969. The film will play as fragments of a found biopic about Roebuck and the remarkable work he did at U.Va. The class worked with professionals who came from all over to work with Everson and Harold and the class served as the crew, learning invaluable lessons about every aspect of filmmaking. “More than anything, it allowed us to come together in a way that a classroom setting would never allow,” said Anthony Restivo, a community scholar who was part of the film, “and to really do something. We actually made a movie, and thanks to Kevin Everson’s and Claudrena Harold’s hard work, generosity, and trust, we now know more about that process than we ever could have imagined.”