Ephraim Asili

Filmed on location in Harlem (NY) and Ethiopia, Forged Ways oscillates between the first person account of a filmmaker, a man navigating the streets of Harlem, and the day to day life in the cities and villages of Ethiopia.

Based on real events, the film’s protagonist inherits a house in West Philadelphia that becomes home to an urban collective for activists of color. The increasingly claustrophobic drama unfolds as the group attempts to live together and find consensus through Black political discourse and social philosophy.

Commissioned for the Hammer Museum’s new exhibition Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal, Ephraim Asili’s Isis & Osiris reimagines the jazz legend’s experimentations with harp, the instrument that her husband, John Coltrane, bequeathed to her upon his death in 1967 and that became essential to her spiritual and musical evolution. Alice Coltrane’s legacy, and her recently restored concert grand crowned harp, live on in the work of the award-winning contemporary musician Brandee Younger. - MoMA

Through softly textured 16mm photography and regional iconography, Silva offers a modernist reflection on two of upstate New York’s most storied 19th century touchstones—the landscape painters of the Hudson River School and the legend of Rip Van Winkle—nodding to a few musical heroes along the way.

Oscillating between a street festival in Philadelphia, the slave forts and capitol city of Ghana, and the New Jersey shore, American Hunger, explores the relationship between personal experience and collective histories. American fantasies confront African realities. African realities confront America fantasies. African fantasies confront American realities. American realities confront African fantasies…

Shot in Detroit and Windsor, Fluid Frontiers is the culmination of Ephraim Asili's project exploring the artist's relationship with the African Diaspora, structured around unrehearsed readings of poems originally published by the Detroit-based Broadside Press.

“Sketches and Portraits for Jean-Michel was photographed on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan, two areas familiar to Basquiat, and visually explores many of the themes and influences found in his paintings: street life, street art, politics, jazz, bodies in motion, bodies at rest, life, death, and black resilience.” – The Barbican

Shot in Hudson NY and Accompong, Jamaica. Accompong, Jamaica was founded in 1739 after rebel slaves and their descendants fought a protracted war with the British leading to the establishment of a treaty between the two sides. The treaty signed under British governor Edward Trelawny granted Cudjoe’s Maroons 1500 acres of land between their strongholds of Trelawny Town and Accompong in the Cockpits and a certain amount of political autonomy and economic freedoms.Cudjoe, a leader of the Maroons, is said to have united the Maroons in their fight for autonomy under the Kindah Tree—a large, ancient mango tree that is still standing.

Points on a Space Age explores the recent activity of the remaining members of the influential Sun Ra Arkestra since the passing of its founding member, Sun Ra and examines their current work (in the physical absence of Sun Ra) under the direction of Marshall Allen.

Street scenes from Salvador, Brazil and Harlem, New York.

Constructed entirely from clips gleaned from the digitized contents of the Prelinger Archives, MOVIE TOTE explores the history of race and class in the United States.

A portrait of Alexander Calder's "Five Swords" as well as a tribute to a friend and mentor that I recently lost, filmmaker Peter Hutton.