BIOGRAPHY
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Ephraim Asili is an African American artist, filmmaker, DJ, and traveler whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. His childhood and adolescence were imbued with hip-hop music, Hollywood movies, and television. Often inspired by his day-to-day wanderings, Asili creates art that situates itself as a series of meditations of the everyday. He received his BA in film and media arts from Temple University and his MFA in film and interdisciplinary art at Bard College. Asili is currently the director of the Film and Electronic Arts Program at Bard College, where he is also an associate professor teaching film production and film studies.

Asili’s films have screened in festivals and venues all over the world, including the New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Asili’s feature debut, The Inheritance, premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The Inheritance was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its permanent collection and is currently in distribution with Grasshopper Films. In 2020, Asili was named as one of "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker magazine and in 2021, Asili was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation recipient. Most recently, Asili directed the short film, Strange Math, and a live fashion show at the Louvre for Louis Vuitton that features Kendrick Lamar, The Florida A&M Marching 100, and music by the Sun Ra Arkestra.

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FRAMES OF REFERENCE, FALL 2026
EPHRAIM ASILI
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PROGRAM ONE: Wednesday, January 21st - 6pm
Jepson Hall 118, Jepson School, University of Richmond

Forged Ways (2010)
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)
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.
 
Many Thousands Gone (2014)
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 an interpretive score. The final film is the combination of the images and McPhee’s real time “sight reading” of the score.
 
Kindah (2016)
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)
Fluid Frontiers is the fifth and final film in the series entitled The Diaspora Suite, exploring Asili’s personal relationship to the African Diaspora. 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.


PROGRAM TWO: Thursday, January 22nd - 6pm
Jepson Hall 118, Jepson School, University of Richmond

Calder for Peter (2017)
A film commissioned by the Alexander Calder Foundation, Calder for Peter is simultaneously a portrait of Alexander Calder’s “Five Swords” and a tribute to a friend, mentor, and colleague, filmmaker Peter Hutton.
 
Points On a Space Age (2007)
“A documentary about the Arkestra, but it's one whose presentation reflects the multilevel approach Sun Ra had to music and life in general. Jump cuts and split screens dot the visual stream with home movie footage from the Arkestra in Egypt during the 1970s to the Arkestra of today led by Marshall Allen. Director Ephraim Asili wisely divides the 40 minutes into distinct chapters, illustrating each with band interviews, live footage, visuals of planets and NASA launches, and his voice quoting writings from Ra. The effect is cohesive and vibrant, bringing the gentle, funky and wholly human universe of Sun Ra into a surprisingly contemporary focus. The editing is well done and brings clarity to the narrative, so one doesn't get lost in the stream of images, and the footage is interesting and fun to watch. While Sun Ra is no longer on the planet, this doc sketches the possibility of a continuance of the spirit of Ra with the current Arkestra and, more importantly, ourselves” — Nilan Perera
 
Sketches and Portraits for Jean-Michel (2019)
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.
 
Isis & Osiris (2025)
Isis & Osiris reimagines jazz legend Alice Coltrane’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.
 
Notes on Utopia & Visions (2025)
Notes on Utopia & Visions is an excerpt from Ephraim Asili's ongoing documentary Don & Moki: Organic Music Society, a feature film about the personal relationship and collaborative art practice shared by Don and Moki Cherry. The excerpt features an interview with Tonie Roos, a lifelong friend of Moki's, and focuses on the activities that took place during the 1971 exhibition Utopia and Visions 1871-1981 at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

 
PROGRAM THREE (ONLINE)
 
The Inheritance (2020)
A young man inherits his grandmother's house and, with the encouragement of his girlfriend, turns it into a Black socialist collective where community forms the basis of family.