2022–2025

Ephraim Asili (USA) is an African-American artist, filmmaker, and traveler whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. He studied at Temple University and received his MFA in film and video arts from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. His films have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Black Star Film Festival, Flaherty Film Seminar, Rotterdam, Milan and New Orleans Film Festivals, NY Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Whitney Museum of American Art, and countless other museums, festivals, and microcinemas internationally. Asili was a Media City Film Festival Mobile Frames Filmmaker in Residence (2016), an MCFF Grand Prize Winner (2017), and a Guggenheim Fellow (2021). His feature film The Inheritance premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival in 2020, and won the Grand Prize at Cinema du Réel in Paris (2021). Writing about his work has recently appeared in Hyperallergic, Vogue, USA Today, Artforum, etc. He is a professor in Film and Electronic Arts at Bard College, and lives in Hudson, New York. Asili’s forthcoming Chrysalis-supported project focuses on the life and work of Don and Moki Cherry.

An electrifying voice in American independent cinema, the filmmaker, artist, and DJ Ephraim Asili believes that moving images can revolutionize our perception of the world. His body of work attests to this conviction. Since he began making films more than a decade ago, he has delved into the complexities of the Black experience and challenged cinematic forms and conventions. – Beatrice Loayza

> Integral Whirls: A Dossier on Ephraim Asili 

>  New York Times Review (2021)

> Lessons in Liberation (Criterion)

>  Interview with Dennis Lim at NYFF (2020)

> Walker Art Center: The Year According to Ephraim Asili