In Search of Bengali Harlem Comes to the UK: Stories of Black and South Asian Solidarity

Members of the Pakistan League of America with Black and South Asian guests, New York, 1952 — a rare glimpse of mid-century solidarity across race, faith, and migration.

Some stories smell like cumin and cologne—like records spinning through cracked windows on a Harlem night. Some don’t just cross oceans—they survive them.

I remember the first time I encountered In Search of Bengali Harlem. Back then, I was still collecting fragments—anything that spoke to the coming together of Black and South Asian cultures. Vivek Bald’s work kept resurfacing—whispered as essential reading, a missing chapter in the stories I’d been trying to tell our communities, so they might recognize the kinship empire tried to erase.

Vivek first reached out to me and the BlindianProject in 2022, as the film entered DOC NYC, where it earned a Special Mention in the Metropolis category—dedicated to stories about New York and New Yorkers. From there, it travelled across the U.S., gathering awards and momentum like a movement rediscovering its pulse.

We reconnected in July 2024—a phone call received in the middle of the night, just as Kamala Harris announced her presidential run. It was a moment thick with questions about representation, race, and belonging—one where she was thrust into the limelight, cast as a symbol meant to save us from what was already coming.

We looked at that night as a portal, an opening. A chance for our communities to recognize the quiet power we’ve always held together—how we’ve nurtured one another in darker times, searching for comfort, searching for home.

Across continents, it felt like both our communities were holding our breath, waiting to see what solidarity might look like now.

And today, in England—a nation once built on the extraction that scattered us—we come together again. As nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment surge—visible in “Unite the Kingdom” marches, weaponized flags, and calls from figures like Nigel Farage to revoke “leave to remain”—In Search of Bengali Harlem offers a vital counterpoint.

It returns not as nostalgia, but as instruction. Because every border today is built on a memory someone tried to forget. The film uncovers buried histories of Black and South Asian solidarity, showing how migration and memory have always been intertwined across the Atlantic.

Here in the U.K., where debates on belonging and Islamophobia dominate public life, its story of connection and shared struggle feels both urgent and restorative. Each screening becomes more than cinema—it’s a cultural intervention, a reminder that the bonds between communities of colour are older, deeper, and far more hopeful than the forces trying to divide them.

The Film and the Story

The lights dim. The reel hums. A doorway opens.

At its core, In Search of Bengali Harlem is a story about migration, memory, and the love that survives both. Directed by Vivek Bald, the film follows Alaudin Ullah—a playwright, comedian, and son of Bangladeshi immigrants—as he retraces his parents’ journeys across continents and generations.

Growing up in 1980s Harlem, Alaudin was shaped by the revolutionary pulse of hip-hop. Yet he was haunted by the distance between that rhythm and the quiet faith of his Bangladeshi Muslim parents. His search takes him from New York’s streets to the rice fields of rural Bangladesh, unearthing a family history that mirrors the migrations of thousands.

Alaudin Ullah journeys by boat through rural Bangladesh in In Search of Bengali Harlem—retracing his family’s path across water, memory, and migration.

His father left East Bengal in 1922, aged just fourteen, and built a life in Harlem’s vibrant undercommons—where Bengali Muslim men, navigating racist Asian Exclusion laws, married into African American and Puerto Rican families. They broke bread with figures like Malcolm X and Miles Davis, building communities that defied segregation and redefined belonging.

In Bangladesh, Alaudin uncovers his mother’s story—a tale of quiet courage. One of the first women to migrate from rural Bangladesh to the U.S. in the 1960s, her life speaks to resilience, faith, and the silences that migration demands.

Woven through it all is a transcendent soundtrack by Vijay Iyer, Zakir Hussain, Ganavya, Imani Uzuri, and Yosvany Terry—a sonic archive that carries the heartbeat of Harlem, the hum of the subcontinent, and the breath of everything in between.

This is not just a film; it’s a living archive—a reminder that the maps of empire can never contain the routes of love, faith, and survival.

The Screenings — Coming Home Across Oceans

The lights rise again. The room exhales.

This November, In Search of Bengali Harlem arrives in the U.K.—London (Rich Mix) and Birmingham (Soul City Arts)—through a collaboration between BlindianProject, Brown Girl In The Ring, and Rich Mix: three communities committed to reimagining how art, memory, and migration speak to each other.

In London, the film makes its U.K. premiere at Rich Mix, revealing the shared histories of Black and Brown communities through one immigrant son’s search for his parents’ story—and for intergenerational healing.The screening will be followed by a conversation with the filmmakers and Jonah Batambuze, exploring how the film’s themes—migration, belonging, Islamophobia, and love—speak to Britain today.

Audiences are invited to stay after for drinks and hospitality snacks at the cinema bar, sound-tracked by DJ sets from the DayTimers crew—Provhat and Izzi. It’s solidarity, but make it soundtracked.

In Birmingham, In Search of Bengali Harlem finds a spiritual home at Soul City Arts—a space built on the same principles that shaped the film itself: community, creativity, and faith in togetherness. Here, the story returns to a city that has always pulsed with migration and memory, where the textures of mosque, market, and music intertwine.

Across both cities, these screenings are not just cultural events—they’re acts of remembrance and repair. Moments to gather, to witness, to remind ourselves that belonging has never been a straight line.

🎟 Tickets now available:

• London – [https://richmix.org.uk/cinema/in-serach-of-bengali-harlem/]

• Birmingham – [https://www.soulcityarts.com/bengaliharlem/]

  
  

Ready to experience it with us? Book your seat and be part of this living archive in motion.

The Return

Filmmakers Vivek Bald and Alaudin Ullah research early South Asian migration in In Search of Bengali Harlem, uncovering erased stories of life and solidarity in Harlem’s Black and Brown communities.

Maybe that’s the real work of film—to give us back what the world took. To remind us that even in loss, we belong to each other.

In Search of Bengali Harlem isn’t just being screened; it’s being summoned. Every seat filled, every conversation sparked, every body present becomes a small act of recovery—a reminder that we are still here, still building, still believing in one another.

A century after these stories began, we gather again—not to remember, but to return. To return to the sound of our names spoken in two accents. To the kitchens where spice and bassline meet. To the faith that solidarity is not performance—it’s inheritance.

So come through. Bring a friend. Stay for the music. Stay for the memory. Stay for the future we’re already writing together.

Jonah Batambuze is a, Ugandan-American interdisciplinary artist and founder of the BlindianProject, a global platform remixing Black x Brown identity through art, history, and storytelling. His work moves across installation, film, writing, and education—challenging systems of erasure while building new cultural blueprints.

Batambuze speaks and facilitates internationally on topics including Black South Asian solidarity, caste and colonial legacies, diasporic memory, and cultural resistance.

For speaking engagements, workshops, or media inquiries, contact: jonah@blindian-project.com or visit jonahbatambuze.com/speaking