The Inher­i­tance

Our pol­i­tics is inter­wo­ven into the way we lead our lives in such an inti­mate man­ner that is insep­a­ra­ble from our every­day exis­tence. Ephraim Asili’s debut fea­ture The Inher­i­tance cap­tures this through inter­wo­ven sto­ries of activist groups in Philadel­phia as they live, work, and fight for their communities.

A cre­ative adap­ta­tion of Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chi­noise, the film fol­lows a young man who inher­its a house in Philadel­phia from his grand­moth­er. When mov­ing in with his girl­friend, he finds his late grandmother’s books, mag­a­zines and records, and togeth­er they learn about Black activists of the 1970s and ​’80s that were inspired by Marx­ist polit­i­cal move­ments. The cou­ple start a com­mu­nal liv­ing space called the House of Ubun­tu in the spir­it of these activists, turn­ing the house into a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre that aims to teach the tenets of Black social­ism to the peo­ple of Philadelphia.

While this cen­tral nar­ra­tive unfolds, The Inher­i­tance morphs into a strik­ing visu­al essay about anoth­er rad­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty in Philadel­phia named MOVE, a Black sep­a­ratist move­ment that was the tar­get of a 1985 bomb­ing by the Philadel­phia Police that killed 11 peo­ple. The rest of the film splits its time between nar­ra­tive and prose, devot­ing time to the fore­bears of Black Marx­ism in the glob­al strug­gle against racism and cap­i­tal­ism while thought­ful­ly plac­ing the young activists in the House of Ubun­tu as a con­tin­u­a­tion of this work.

Inspired in part by his own time liv­ing in a sim­i­lar com­mu­nal liv­ing space, Asili is adept at pick­ing up on the sub­tle per­son­al dynam­ics in the house – he frames the lit­tle fights, flir­ta­tions, and irri­ta­tions that come with co-exist­ing in a way that feels equal parts mun­dane and impor­tant. In the best way, the scenes fea­tur­ing mem­bers of the House of Ubun­tu play like a sit­com, rev­el­ling in the every­day moments that make their com­mit­ment to liv­ing col­lec­tive­ly engag­ing and exciting.

Because of the overt polit­i­cal inten­tions of the film, The Inher­i­tance is in the mid­dle of a bal­anc­ing act as to not to appear over­ly didac­tic, but the per­for­mances – anchored by Nozipho Mclean’s mag­net­ic turn as a dri­ven aca­d­e­m­ic who guides her house­mates through the the­o­ret­i­cal side of their activism – keep things fresh by bring­ing a sense of nat­u­ral­ism to the house’s dynamics.

The half-nar­ra­tive, half-doc­u­men­tary struc­ture is crit­i­cal to defin­ing the over­ar­ch­ing theme of Asili’s work. Told through archival footage and news­reels, the sto­ry of MOVE is vital in the way their com­mit­ment to col­lec­tivism and com­mu­ni­ty par­al­lels Asili’s fic­tion­al group. These two sto­ries con­verge when the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of MOVE – who were chil­dren when their par­ents were impris­oned due to a shootout that pre­dat­ed the bomb­ing – and the House of Ubun­tu meet, and these life­long activists share the per­son­al toll of their work with those that are just begin­ning their jour­ney in lib­er­a­tion politics.

The thought­ful union of these com­mu­ni­ties shows that the tit­u­lar ​‘inher­i­tance’ refers not just to a house, but a point in the long lega­cy of Black lib­er­a­tion groups and their rad­i­cal poten­tial. As a por­trait of activists deep in the strug­gle for lib­er­a­tion, The Inher­i­tance is a polit­i­cal­ly urgent and enter­tain­ing film that sees the human­i­ty at the heart of the con­tin­u­ous fight for freedom.