As a teenager in 1980s Harlem, Alaudin Ullah was swept up in the revolutionary energy of hip-hop. He rejected his working-class Bangladeshi parents and turned his back on everything South Asian and Muslim. Now, as an actor and playwright contending with the Islamophobia of post-9/11 Hollywood, Ullah wants to tell his parents’ stories – but he has no idea who they really were.

In Search of Bengali Harlem follows Ullah from the streets of New York  to the villages of Bangladesh to uncover the pasts of his father and mother. In doing so, he discovers a lost history – in which South Asian Muslims, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans forged an extraordinary multiracial community in the tenements of mid- 20th century Harlem.

We were proud to premier this award winning film in Birmingham and London, alongside the directors who engaged in a Q&A with the audiences.

Q&A with the Directors following the screening

Vivek Bald Bengali Harlem

Vivek Bald
Director, Producer, Writer

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 U.S. and Britain.

Bald’s first documentary TAXI-VALA/AUTO-BIOGRAPHY (1994) examined the lives and activism of South-Asian New York City taxi drivers. His second documentary MUTINY: ASIANS STORM BRITISH MUSIC (2003) focused on South Asian youth, music, and anti-racist politics in 1970s-90s Britain. In 2020, Bald consulted upon and appeared in the Peabody Award winning PBS documentary series, ASIAN AMERICANS. He is the author of Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Harvard University Press, 2013)

Alaudin Ullah Bengali Harlem

Alaudin Ullah
Director, Producer, Writer

Alaudin Ullah is a playwright, actor, and the son of one of the first Bengali Muslim men to settle in Harlem. Ullah is the author of the acclaimed one-man show, “DISHWASHER DREAMS,” based on his father’s life in New York City in the 1930s-60s, which he has performed across the US, 

Ullah’s three-act play “HALAL BROTHERS” centres on the interactions between African American and Bengali Muslims in a Harlem halal butcher’s shop on the day of Malcolm X’s murder in 1965.