Connecting Diaspora: Short Films by Ephraim Asili

Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Tuesday, July 18 at 7pm for a screening of short films by Ephraim Asili. Asili’s films unfold the intersections of the African diaspora and the artist’s personal and political histories with a strong sense of poetics and intellectual acuity. They masterfully straddle personal and political, memory and place, diaspora and home. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Asili.

Films 

Forged Ways (2010, 15 minutes)
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.

American Hunger (2013, 19 minutes)
Oscillating between a street festival in Philadelphia, the slave forts and capital 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 American fantasies.

Many Thousands Gone (2014, 8 minutes)
Filmed on location in Salvador, Brazil (the last city in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw slavery) and Harlem, NY (an international stronghold of the African Diaspora), Many Thousands Gone draws parallels between a summer afternoon on the streets of the two cities. A silent version of the film was given to jazz multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee to use as an interpretive score. The final film is the combination of the images and McPhee’s real time “sight reading” of the score.

Kindah (2016, 12 minutes)
Kindah was shot in Hudson, NY and Accompong, Jamaica. Accompong 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 1,500 acres of land between their strongholds of Trelawny Town and Accompong in the Cockpits. Cudjoe, a leader of the Maroons, is said to have united them in their fight for autonomy under the Kindah Tree—a large, ancient mango tree that still stands to this day. The tree symbolizes the kinship of the community on its common land.

Fluid Frontiers (2017, 23 minutes) 
Shot along the Detroit River, Fluid Frontiers explores the relationship between concepts of resistance and liberation, exemplified by the Underground Railroad, Broadside Press, and artworks of local Detroit artists. All of the poems are read from original copies of Broadside Press publications by natives of the Detroit/Windsor region, and were shot without rehearsal.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.

Accessibility                   
–Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.        
–For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator which leads into the e-flux office space. Entrance to the elevator is nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door). We have a ramp for the steps within the space.                 
–e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom. There are no steps between the Screening Room and this bathroom.