Amid DEI Rollbacks, BFI Raises A Glass To Black Talent: Were Still Doing That Work — Photos

“Woke is back,” declared BFI CEO Ben Roberts. “It never really went away.” The message served as a toast at BFI America’s A Celebration of British and American Black Talent in Hollywood event. As creatives took a break from mingling, he reaffirmed the division’s commitment to inclusion. “We are here because our work is all about brokering conversations and connections. It’s a handshake between the U.K. and the U.S. Our communities and industries are so intertwined and well-connected. So, I’d say in this room, we want you to meet people and make new connections with people that you don’t know,” he said.

The party brought everyone to Gravillis Inc., arguably one of the industry’s best-kept secrets. The Black-owned Los Angeles marketing and graphic design studio has designed some of the most viral movie posters in the last decade alone, including Challengers, Sinners, Obsession, Michael B. Jordan’s The Thomas Crown Affair, and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, among others. And they boast great partnerships with Spike Lee, Dolby, Prime Video, Warner Bros. and more. Kenny Gravillis, the co-owner and creative director of the studio and sits on the BFI’s honorary council, also co-hosted the evening. “Over the last few years, the words diversity, equity, inclusion have been considered almost ugly. And I love it when a company, especially like the BFI, can actually stand 10 toes down and say, ‘No, actually we need to do this,’” he told guests.

The idea for the gathering grew out of the BFI’s community-building work at international festivals, including its Black women’s lunch in Cannes. What began with 12 women looking to find their people grew to 220 attendees in its fifth year, according to Melanie Hayes, the BFI’s senior director of inclusion.

Speaking with Deadline in the studio’s stylish pop-art boardroom, Hayes explained that those celebrations began with a familiar frustration. “We just know so many people working across the industry in different roles, and everybody was telling us, ‘Well, I always feel like the only one in the room,’” Hayes said. “And so we were like, ‘But hang on, we know all of these people and you guys have never met.’”

Bringing them together became a way to celebrate the talent already there and give people a chance to build relationships. Los Angeles marked the BFI’s first such celebration in the U.S., where Hayes felt the timing made that sense of community especially important. “It just felt like, especially at this moment when DEI is kind of being dialed back across the industry and especially in the States, that we are still out here doing that work and it felt like a really good time just to try and bring some solidarity and community to our industry,” Hayes added.

Hayes acknowledged that the U.K. was experiencing some of that retreat, too. Within the BFI, however, her team continues to have the organization’s backing. “DEI is a central tenet of our 10-year strategy. I have a team of five. I sit under our CEO. We look across the whole organization, the whole pipeline of film,” Hayes said.

For Roberts, that commitment also comes with a responsibility to keep pushing. The BFI’s diversity standards helped inform those adopted by BAFTA and the Academy, making their filmmaking efforts more inclusive in front of and behind the camera, and its position as a public body gives it room to continue developing that work. There’s a job that we can do, particularly if there’s a sort of rollback elsewhere to just sort of hold the pen for a while,” Roberts said. “There’s stability in the U.K. at the moment. We’ve got a very non-interventional government. They encourage us to do this work, not the opposite.”

However, on the same token, there’s a prevalent debate online as to whether British Black actors landing Black American roles should be worthy of celebration or are a symptom of a larger, more nuanced issue. There are frustrations to talk through, no doubt. Hayes recalled David Oyelowo explaining at a BFI keynote that he left Britain for the U.S. because he couldn’t move beyond certain roles or find the stories he wanted to tell. She wanted to celebrate those who have done well abroad while acknowledging the work still needed to give talent more opportunities at home.

Roberts again emphasized that he hoped the organization’s future could lead filmmakers and studio tastemakers to develop broader storytelling together. “We work primarily in the independent space, which is not about being hired, but taking control of your destiny and making stuff,” he said. “So these events can hopefully create a little bit of new partnership.”

Hayes added: “Looking beyond one country could also help filmmakers find the money to get their projects made.”

BFI America board member Steven Adams remarked on the wealth of stories in just the last year alone, but knows that there’s plenty of stories waiting to be told about what happens when people with “a shared ethnicity but different cultural backgrounds come together.” Adams says, “And these stories can be a comedy, tragedy, sci-fi or a thriller. I think there’s so much room for anything to happen when we remove ourselves from boxes.”

Gravillis knows something about building a life between the two countries. Born in East London, he moved to America after college; his extended family is still in England, while his children are American. The BFI’s work in education and outreach speaks to him, especially when so many young people may never have heard of a job like his. “A lot of people don’t know that what we do for a living is even an opportunity to do,” he explained. “They don’t know that job even exists in terms of like, oh wow, we’re a creative agency that does marketing for film and TV, especially we’re a Black-owned creative agency that does marketing for film and TV. They don’t know that those jobs actually even exist.”

There is plenty to learn from the organization’s collections, too. Alongside its film funding, festivals, and education programs, the BFI maintains a National Archive that holds more than 25,000 American films and television works. BFI America helps support that work in the U.S. and internationally.

Adams recalled being struck by an Alfred Hitchcock shooting script, with the director’s notes and illustrations still on its pages. “It’s like an education unto itself to see how this person was actually thinking while they were making a film that you know so well,” he said.

So what do we do when people are still implying that diversity isn’t accessible? Hayes had an answer. “You hear a lot of this, ‘We don’t have enough people. We can’t find people. They’re not talented enough. And I know that’s not true,” she said. “So, I just really want to say that we see you, and we’re over in the U.K. working away, and we are in the U.S. trying to uplift Black talent and other marginalized groups. And that’s what this celebration is about today, and I am so grateful to all who showed up to do so.”