The @blindianproject is honored at being named one of the community partners for the @docnycfest premiere of "In Search of Bengali Harlem.” @vivekbald1857
In today's mainstream media, there's a lack of positive stories centering:
- South Asians
- Muslims
- The intersection of Black x South Asian experiences
To top things off, we've got a discount code for the in-person screening on November 13th.
DOCNYC_PTNR_22
Much more on the way. In the interim, check the synopsis below:
As a teenager in 1980s Harlem, Alaudin Ullah was swept up in the revolutionary energy of early hip-hop. He rejected his working-class Bangladeshi parents and turned his back on everything South Asian and Muslim. Now, as an actor and playwright in post-9/11 America, Alaudin wants to tell his parents' stories but has no idea of the lives they led as Muslim immigrants of an earlier era.
In Search of Bengali Harlem follows Ullah from the streets of New York City to the villages of Bangladesh to uncover the pasts of his father, Habib, and mother, Mohima. Alaudin discovers that Habib was part of an extraordinary history of mid-20th century Harlem, in which Bengali Muslim men, dodging racist Asian Exclusion laws, married into New York's African American and Puerto Rican communities – and in which the likes of Malcolm X and Miles Davis shared space and broke bread with immigrants from the subcontinent.
Then, after crossing the globe to visit the family his parents left behind, Alaudin unearths unsettling truths about his mother: the hardships and trauma she overcame to become one of the first women to migrate to the U.S. from rural Bangladesh.
In Search of Bengali Harlem is a transformative journey, not just for Alaudin Ullah, but for our understanding of the complex histories of South Asian and Muslim Americans. Advisory: References to childhood trauma.
Kommentarer