In Search of Bengali Harlem (Documentary)

By

Thursday, October 5, 2023 | 6pm to 9pm

The City College of New York
259 Convent Avenue – Shepard Hall Rm 291
New York, NY 10031

RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/in-search-of-bengali-harlem-film-and-talk-tickets-696879905557

Join Thirdworld Newsreel and the Documentary Forum at CCNY for a screening and discussion of the documentary In Search of Bengali Harlem, with co-director and author Vivek Bald, and his own path to documenting his South Asian community and music, and his work in new media. 

In Search of Bengali Harlem follows actor/playwright Alaudin Ullah from the streets of New York City to the villages of Bangladesh to uncover the pasts of his father, Habib, and mother, Mohima in this heart-warming documentary.

Alaudin discovers that his father was part of an unknown, 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 former homes of his parents, Alaudin unearths unsettling truths about his mother: about the hardships and trauma that 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.

2022, 84 min., Color & b/w Directed by Vivek Bald & Alaudin Ullah Produced by Susannah Ludwig Edited by Beyza Boyacioglu.

Co-Sponsor
Asian American / Asian Research Institute – CUNY

Author Bio

Presented By:

Vivek Bald is an award-winning filmmaker, writer, digital media producer, and scholar. His work over the past twenty-five years has explored the stories and experiences of South Asians in the US and Britain. Bald’s first documentary, Taxi-vala/Auto-biography (1994) examined the lives, struggles, and activism of New York City taxi drivers from Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Bald’s second film, Mutiny: Asians Storm British Music (2003) focused on South Asian youth, music, and anti-racist politics in 1970s-90s Britain. He is the author of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Harvard University Press, 2013) and is the faculty director of MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. He is also developing “The Lost Histories Project,” an interactive documentary and participatory oral history that will build upon and extend the Bengali Harlem film and book. Bald received his PhD in American Studies from NYU in 2009.