Don & Moki: Organic Music Society with Ephraim Asili and Louis Massiah

Moki Cherry, Don Cherry, and Bengt Berger, Utopia and Visions 1871–1981 at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, 1971. Courtesy of the Estate of Moki Cherry.

This Black History Month, get a sneak peek into a film-in-progress by Philadelphia native Ephraim Asili exploring the shared artistic, political, and spiritual worlds that shaped the work of multi-instrumentalist Don Cherry and his collaborator and wife, the artist Moki Cherry.

Brought together on Moki’s birthday, Asili joins Scribe Video Center founder Louis Massiah for a conversation anchored in Asili’s ongoing work, Don & Moki: Organic Music Society. This feature-length 16mm documentary/essay film draws from rare archival materials, filmed performances, and newly shot footage and interviews with the couple’s many collaborators. An excerpt from this work is currently on view in The Living Temple: The World of Moki Cherry.

Together, they will reflect on filmmaking as a mode of research, listening, and collective memory, and on the challenges of translating improvisational, interdisciplinary practices to the screen.