Ephraim Asili

Associate Professor of Film and Electronic Arts; Director, Film and Electronic Arts

Primary Academic Program: Film and Electronic Arts

Biography: Ephraim Asili is an African American artist, filmmaker, DJ, and traveler whose work focuses on the African diaspora as a cultural force. His childhood and adolescence were imbued with hip-hop music, Hollywood movies, and television. Often inspired by his day-to-day wanderings, Asili creates art that situates itself as a series of meditations of the everyday. He received his BA in film and media arts from Temple University and his MFA in film and interdisciplinary art at Bard College. Asili is currently the director of the Film and Electronic Arts Program at Bard College, where he is also an associate professor teaching film production and film studies.

Asili’s films have screened in festivals and venues all over the world, including the New York Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Asili’s feature debut, The Inheritance, premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival. The Inheritance was recently acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its permanent collection andis currently in distribution with Grasshopper Films. In 2020, Asili was named as one of "25 New Faces of Independent Film" by Filmmaker magazine. In 2021, Asili was a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation recipient. Most recently, Asili directed the short film, Strange Math, and a live fashion show at the Louvre for Louis Vuitton.

BA, Temple University; MFA, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. At Bard since 2015.
Phone: 845-758-7563