News

“The Inheritance,” Ephraim Asili’s debut feature film, beautifully abandons genre to consider questions about community, art and Black liberation.

EMPAC at Rensselaer to receive a ‘Grants for Arts Projects Award’ from the NEA

Ephraim Asili's EMPAC-produced film The Inheritance will be streamed nationally

Asili’s debut weaves together the histories of the MOVE Organization, the Black Arts Movement and his time in a Black Marxist collective. It centers on a man who inherits his grandmother’s house and turns it into a Black socialist collective.

Filmed in residence in EMPAC's Studio 1—Goodman in October 2019, Dolap’s new film less than no time was screened at the Istanbul Theater Festival in November, 2020.

The Unarrival Experiments — Unconcealment Ceremonies centers the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy through a Black, Queer, and Transembodied lens. The work will encompass both interdisciplinary performance work and a site-specific performance series, as well as new and integrated media and two book-length works of writing.

Under the artistic leadership of “innovator in disability arts” (The New York Times), Alice Sheppard’s Kinetic Light enables new understandings of the moving world. Dancers perch, swoop, and soar on a striking custom-built ramp of curves and peaks in DESCENT in this recorded version making its online premiere.

Ephraim Asili's Commissioned Film ‘The Inheritance’ to Screen Nov 16–20 for Rensselaer Classes. Access will be available as physically-distanced screenings and online. Sign up on the EMPAC Website ends November 9, 2020.

Announcing new music commissions as part of the curatorial programming of EMPAC’s Curator of Music and 2020 Native Launchpad awardee Dr. Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti.

Although our fall program will look different than it has in the past as we continue to follow university policies related to the coronavirus, we are continuing work with artists on the commissioning and production of new ambitious performances and artworks across music, time-based visual art, theater and dance.

Joining hundreds of buildings and landmarks across the country, EMPAC will light up at dusk on August 26, 2020 with the suffrage colors of purple and gold, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and women’s right to vote in the United States.

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has selected Ephraim Asili’s feature film The Inheritance to premiere at the prestigious September festival. Commissioned by EMPAC, The Inheritance was developed at the Center through a series of workshops and production residencies between 2018 and 2020.