Big Chief, Black Hawk | Appreciation, Not Appropriation

In California’s Central Valley, hundreds of Latinx youth miss months of school annually, because they live with their families in one of the state’s farmworker housing centers. These subsidized apartments require families to move out each winter and relocate at least 50 miles away before being allowed to return in the spring. These cycles of displacement come at a high cost to families’ futures.

As a teen, Alaudin Ullah was swept up by the energy of hip-hop and rebelled against his Bangladeshi roots. Now a playwright contending with post-9/11 Hollywood’s Islamophobia, he sets out to tell his parents’ stories. IN SEARCH OF BENGALI HARLEM tracks his quest from mid-20th-century Harlem to Bangladesh, unveiling intertwined histories of South Asian Muslims, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans.

In HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS, a family reeling from the unjust incarceration of an ailing mentally ill loved one, calls on their faith and the strength of community to right a systemic wrong. Music, love and creativity are used to permeate the isolation of a solitary confinement cell, and a public performance on prison grounds is used to challenge the state to do better.