A Ladder to the Heavens—The Everson Museum’s Behind the Artist Film Series

By Shelby Rodger

The fireworks in Kevin Macdonald’s vivid 2016 documentary “Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang” burst onto the projector screen in the Everson Museum’s newly refurbished auditorium on Thursday night.

This screening is part of the Everson’s monthly Behind the Artist Film Series, which started in Dec. 2021. As the title suggests, the documentary follows Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang as he rises to an elite level of stardom with his pioneering firework displays. The film does a great job of exploring why Cai creates such extravagant pieces, starting with his childhood in Quanzhou, China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and leading up to his most ambitious project yet: a celestial 1,650-foot ladder made of flames that soars upwards into the sky. 

I am still impressed by the film’s ability to capture Cai’s fireworks so beautifully considering their massive size. One of the best scenes is a beguiling recap of Cai’s 2014 daytime fireworks show in Shanghai. Slow moving closeup shots of colorful, billowing smoke clouds that took over the sky above the Huangpu River moved in rhythm to melancholy yet alluring music. I couldn’t even think about anything other than the visuals on the screen at this point—time felt like it had stopped. 

This moment I experienced in the Everson’s theater is exactly why curator Nancy Keefe Rhodes wanted to make this film series happen. 

“You can watch all these films online,” Rhodes said. “But what happens in the dark before a huge screen when you’re watching with other people is different.”

Rhodes is a film instructor in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Syracuse University and an alumnus of the Goldring Arts Journalism program in Newhouse. She frequently writes, edits, and curates for various galleries across campus, such as Light Work and Point of Contact Gallery, and is a longtime member of the Everson Museum. When speaking with her about the “Sky Ladder” screening, she told me to try imagining what the fireworks scene in Shanghai would look like on my laptop. I couldn’t help but laugh at the idea.

According to Rhodes, this is one of many reasons why film classes in the College of Visual and Performing Arts require students to attend mandatory cinematheque screenings every week. 

“We do this because we want them to have a classic cinema experience,” she said. 

After two years of COVID-19, this cinema experience has become somewhat hard to come by due to the meteoric rise of at-home streaming services. Rhodes hopes this film series will remind the community what it feels like to watch a movie on the big screen.

Rhodes also talked about the ways in which her curation of this film series stemmed from the Everson Museum’s controversial 2020 deaccession of a famous Jackson Pollock painting, describing the virtual conference the museum held with the community shortly after announcing their decision.

“The purpose of that was to diversify their collection and to take care of new art,” she said. “It was a really good discussion of why this needs to happen, why museum collections need to shift, who’s being represented, [and] what can we do about that. So I felt that this was one of the Everson’s finest moments, when they took that stand.”

When Rhodes began talking again with the Everson about bringing movies back to the museum, she told leadership staff the entire series should be diverse, featuring films by and about people of color and women.

“I think that this needs to be a next step,” Rhodes said. “It can’t be a one-off that they sold that painting and then bought a few other paintings. It has to be part of the fabric of how the Everson operates from now on.”

I asked Rhodes if she has plans to continue this important film series next year. While she doesn’t know anything concrete at the moment, she does hope that this becomes a series that carries on in perpetuity. 

I will gladly be in attendance at next month’s screening on April 7, which will feature two documentaries back-to-back. Perhaps there will be more time-freezing moments for me to experience in the dark with my fellow Syracuse cinema lovers.