Jamal Ademola
Biography
Jamal Ademola is a Nigerian-American artist and filmmaker whose work moves fluidly between cinema, advertising, and fine art, spanning narrative, documentary, animation, installation, acting, and performance. His storytelling blends the intimate and the surreal to create vivid visual narratives exploring Black identity, memory, migration, ancestry, and belonging. His documentary work includes "House of Aama: Threads of Legacy" for PBS American Masters, supported by Firelight Media, and "The Blind Couple from Mali", a feature documentary on Grammy-nominated musicians Amadou & Mariam, for which he served as Creative Director. As an actor, Jamal appeared in "Imagine a Moon Colony", part of Hulu's TV series "Your Attention Please", and in the feature film "Ten-Cent Daisy", available on Amazon Prime Video and Tubi. Jamal's artwork and films have been exhibited internationally at LACMA (2026), African Film Festival New York (2026, 2025), Seattle Black Film Festival (2026, 2025), Black Harvest Film Festival (2025), Silicon Valley African Film Festival (2025), Albany Institute of History and Art (2025), DOC NYC (2024), Images Festival (2024), Wassaic Project (2024), August Wilson African American Cultural Center (2024), Alchemy Film & Arts (2023, 2022), Kala Art Institute, Black Cultural Archives in London, The New School, and PBS. He is currently directing "Pieces of You", a romantic visual autoethnography, and "They Came from the Clouds", a feature documentary supported by Comcast NBCUniversal, BAVC Media, PAM-CUT, and Kala Art Institute. Across mediums, his practice moves between lived experience, dreams, poetics, and imagined worlds, using storytelling as a way to explore who we are and where we come from.
Known For & Full Filmography4 Titles
Movie - 2021, 2h 15m • as Otis
Ten-Cent Daisy (A Lost Mermaid Tale) follows three sisters Orchid, Violet and Daisy, the mermaid who all run away from their small Caribbean fishing village after Daisy is assaulted by the local pastor.
Movie - 2019, 2h 15m • as Hot Vampire
Valentina, a day-walking Black vampire protected from the sun by her melanin, finds it difficult to suppress her bloodlust when a new woman is introduced to her estranged twin daughters.
Movie - 2024, 2h 15m • as Self (Voice)
A dream dance of celestial stars illuminate the mystery of a primordial African odyssey. Yrsa Daley Ward breathes life into this otherworldly journey, guided by the soulful resonance of Tunde Adebimpe's voice and poetry written by Jamal Ademola. I Dreamed of Seeing Myself beckons viewers to transcend the constraints of Black trauma and modern white supremacy, persuading them to ponder the lyrical depths of Blackness as the cosmic human beginning.
Movie - 2020, 2h 15m • as Rory Wade
In 1970 Los Angeles, a Black family looks fifty years into the future and imagines what life might be like in the year 2020. Told through a distinctly Black lens, their predictions unfold through a series of abstract, Afrofuturist images that blur past, present, and imagined possibility. Imagine a Moon Colony explores Black life, family, and visions of the future through the hopes and expectations of an earlier generation. This short film is part of the Hulu TV Series "Your Attention Please." Season 1, Episode 2.