The Diaspora Suite - Fluid Frontiers

Director: Ephraim Asili
Canada, USA, 2017, 23', HDD, color
English with Turkish subtitles

Ephraim Asili’s five-part series The Diaspora Suite is both a personal and global study of the African diaspora. Created over the course of seven years, every film in the series has a unique rhythm built around a specific amalgam of footage shot in American and international locations — each an important site within the African diaspora.

Fluid Frontiers is the fifth and final film in the series entitled The Diaspora Suite, exploring Asili’s personal relationship to the African Diaspora.

The House Is Black

The House Is Black

Memory Surfaces and Mental Prayers

Memory Surfaces and Mental Prayers

The Diaspora Suite - Forged Ways

The Diaspora Suite - Forged Ways

The Diaspora Suite - American Hunger

The Diaspora Suite - American Hunger

The Diaspora Suite - Many Thousands Gone

The Diaspora Suite - Many Thousands Gone

The Diaspora Suite - Kindah

The Diaspora Suite - Kindah

The Diaspora Suite - Fluid Frontiers

The Diaspora Suite - Fluid Frontiers

Turquerie

Turquerie

Having penetrated the Balkans in the fourteenth century, conquered Constantinople in the fifteenth, and reached the gates of Vienna in the sixteenth, the Ottoman Empire long struck fear into European hearts. 

The Ottoman Way of Serving Coffee

The Ottoman Way of Serving Coffee

Coffee was served with much splendor at the harems of the Ottoman palace and mansions. First, sweets (usually jam) was served on silverware, followed by coffee serving. The coffee jug would be placed in a sitil (brazier), which had three chains on its sides for carrying, had cinders in the middle, and was made of tombac, silver or brass. The sitil had a satin or silk cover embroidered with silver thread, tinsel, sequin or even pearls and diamonds.

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

Il Cavallo di Leonardo

In 1493, exactly 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci was finishing the preparations for casting the equestrian monument (4 times life size), which Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan commissioned in memory of his father some 12 years earlier.