The Diaspora Suite by Ephraim Asili
Jazz on Screen
Thu 13 Nov 2025, 18:30,Cinema 2

A film series created over the course of seven years exploring Black culture and the African diaspora through jazz and shared histories, using music to shape its rhythm, energy and visual language.

A series of films that explore the connections and shared histories of Black culture and the African diaspora through the filmmaker’s engagement with sites of historical significance across the United States and internationally. Created over the course of seven years, the suite reflects a deeply personal and global perspective.

Jazz plays a central role in the development and conceptualisation of the films. This influence is most explicit in Many Thousands Gone, where Ephraim Asili invited multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee to compose a score in direct response to the film’s imagery. Beyond this collaboration, the suite as a whole is shaped by the rhythms of Asili’s musical influences, striving to translate the power, movement, and energy of African American music and Black diasporic sonic landscapes into a visual language.