This program brings together some of the most imaginative artists working today—Ephraim Asili (The Inheritance), Lila Avilés (Tótem), Martí Madaula Esquirol (The Living Wardrobe) and a grassroots organization known as the Little Egypt Collective—as they explore the manifold powers of sound and music in film, from Alice Coltrane’s jazz harp to a “furious” wind in northern Spain, and from the aural traces of Pyramid Courts, a once-vibrant African American housing project in Cairo, Illinois, to the brassy exuberance of an all-female band from 60 different Indigenous Mexican communities.
Isis & Osiris. 2024. USA. Directed by Ephraim Asili. 18 min. New York premiere.
Commissioned for the Hammer Museum’s new exhibition Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal, Ephraim Asili’s Isis & Osiris reimagines the jazz legend’s experimentations with harp, the instrument that her husband, John Coltrane, bequeathed to her upon his death in 1967 and that became essential to her spiritual and musical evolution. Alice Coltrane’s legacy, and her recently restored concert grand crowned harp, live on in the work of the award-winning contemporary musician Brandee Younger.
On the Battlefield. 2024. USA. Directed by Little Egypt Collective, Theresa Delsoin, Lisa Marie Malloy, J.P. Sniadecki, Ray Whitaker. Courtesy Cinema Guild. 13 min.
“In the southern Illinois region of Little Egypt, a sound recordist revisits the flat fields where once stood Pyramid Courts, the housing projects that formed the heart of the Black community of his hometown, Cairo. His mic gathers sonic ephemera of past, present and future within the grasses, trees and skies…. On the Battlefield is an overture celebrating the joy and power of Cairo, a town famous for confluences and collisions: between the North and South, the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, and Black liberation and white supremacy” (Little Egypt Collective).
Tramuntana. 2025. Spain/USA. Directed by Martí Madaula Esquirol. 18 min. World premiere.
“In a remote area of northern Spain, the wind has a name: Tramuntana. Tramuntana takes what it wants—clothes, trees, boats, and the people of the landscape who live with the endless threat of being carried away by its force. This film is a lyrical portrait of this furious wind, woven from the stories passed down by local villagers” (Martí Madaula Esquirol). Special thanks to the Instituto Cervantes New York.
MÚSICAS. 2025. Mexico. Directed by Lila Avilés. Courtesy RIMOWA and GEWA. 31 min. World premiere.
Lila Avilés, the award-winning writer-director of Tótem and The Chambermaid, follows Leticia Gallardo and her all-female band Mujeres del Viento Florido, musicians from more than 60 Indigenous communities across Mexico who travel from the mountainous region of Tlahuitoltepec to Oaxaca and Mexico City bringing joyous popular music and a kind of brassy defiance of centuries of persecution.
Program 82 min.