In a year that’s felt like the hands of time are slowly ticking backward — with the anti-diversity, equity and inclusion political climate reversing corporate promises in a post-George Floyd world and Hollywood backtracking on diversity programs to appease Donald Trump’s second presidential term — it’s comforting to know some safe spaces for these communities have still found the means to exist without scrutiny.
That’s partly what makes the inception of Surrounded By Stories, a one-night-only showcase dedicated to spotlighting unreleased works from overlooked Black voices in film, so moving.
Set for June 21 at New York City’s historic SVA Theatre (the same theater used by the Tribeca Film Festival), the intimate event aims to celebrate Black storytelling by offering creatives a place to debut their short films, engage in real-talk panel discussions and rub elbows with industry figures like “Power” star Naturi Naughton, “The Wire” alum Chad Coleman, “The Real Housewives of New York City” star Racquel Chevremont and many others.
What makes the inaugural showcase even more compelling are the dynamic hosts behind it: Grammy-nominated artist and actor Tristan Mack Wilds and award-winning filmmaker Greg Cally, two industry veterans pouring their years of talent and expertise into an initiative that deliberately challenges the anti-DEI agenda plaguing parts of the entertainment industry.
Going against the Hollywood grain to build a space that doesn’t revolve around industry politics, awards or exclusivity is no easy feat. Doing it with the sole purpose of giving marginalized artists more access and tools and funding it from their own pockets? That’s just rare.
However, Cally and Wilds noticed a gap that still hasn’t been meaningfully filled in the film industry: a lack of spaces where underrepresented creatives can share their work without having to jump through hoops for opportunities.
Sure, large-scale festivals like Sundance, Tribeca, Venice and more already exist to help emerging storytellers establish themselves. However, they’re still highly competitive and very costly spaces to be in, and as Cally notes, there simply aren’t enough focused on elevating filmmakers themselves.
That’s where Surrounded By Stories comes in. There are no awards or high stakes to worry about. The event is simply a vessel for creatives to show their projects with no strings attached.
“You’re just showing the work and celebrating that,” Cally says. “You’re celebrating community and the film. And for one day, you can worry about not selling it to someone. Whether a distributor says yes or no, whether the box office numbers are great, whether you got nominated for an Emmy… This is just about the project and seeing how people react to it, and sharing these different actors that are [involved].”
“We need to have places that uplift us in the success of creating art,” Wilds adds, “but also help guide us in a direction that can make our art better… Something that is more geared towards the creator and not the distribution of said art.”
The showcase portion of Surrounded By Stories was born out of a string of industry rejections, according to Wilds and Cally. It also stemmed from a desire to get their short films in front of audiences “without worrying about a middleman.”
“A big part of this business is soliciting yourself, getting yourself in front of different people, film festivals, etc.,” Wilds explains. “Whether you’re an actor or a director or a writer or whatever you do, it comes with a lot of ‘nos’.”
He adds, “After a while, we wanted to get to a place where not only can we showcase our stuff and not have to worry about somebody saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to us, but also give other people an opportunity to be around like-minded creatives and build their stuff to a better place.”
Surrounded By Stories isn’t Wilds and Cally’s first creative collaboration. The two previously worked on the former’s Tidal-released “AfterHours” mini-series and his 2021 short film “Wouldn’t Mean Nuthin’.” They also recently co-launched their Surrounded By Water film collective, which helped produce their upcoming showcase.
Funny enough, the way the longtime collaborators first connected began similarly to this conversation, when Cally, a then-journalist, interviewed his actor-singer friend over a decade ago.
“We were on the phone talking, and then it just turned into a friend-type of conversation,” he recalls. “He was talking about his age — he was born the same year as me. And then all of these similarities kept coming across — his family’s from [the Dominican Republic]; my family’s Haitian… It literally just started with an interview, and we kind of caught a vibe.”
Around that time, Wilds — best known for his roles in “The Wire,” “90210” and “Swagger”— was concentrating on his music career but eager to return to film. Meanwhile, Cally was looking to pivot away from journalism to explore new avenues of storytelling, which led him to filmmaking (“D. Wade: Life Unexpected,” “Never Would Have Made It: The Marvin Sapp Story”).
“I saw where he was with it — how he wanted to start creating stuff, and he saw how I wanted to start creating stuff, and it just slowly started to tick,” says Wilds. “Things just started to fall in place perfectly.”
With their shared ambitions in mind, the pair struck up a creative partnership and began pursuing their goals behind the camera. That eventually led to the idea for their immersive showcase.
Initially, the duo intended to produce films together and find a way to get them seen at film festivals — until they encountered “gatekeepers.”
“These film festivals get to choose who gets seen and who doesn’t,” Cally explains, noting that some can be “very predatory, because they’re preying on people that have hope.”
“So, we’re creating these great films that we’re passionate about, but now we don’t have a platform to share ’em because you gotta have a relationship with the festival programmers, or you gotta have a bunch of five-star celebrities, or you gotta talk about what they deem is a trending topic at the time in order for it to be seen,” he continues.
“Us going through this process, getting a lot of nos from film festivals, getting into some festivals, and being led to believe we were gonna win. And then being on stage and receiving that loss, that’s when you realize, ‘Oh, they’re leveraging the celebrity that Mack has to sell tickets, but they don’t plan on actually honoring us in that way.’”
Finally, he says, the two decided, “Yo, let’s create a film showcase where everybody’s a winner in the room.”
From what Cally and Wilds describe, Surrounded By Stories isn’t an ordinary film showcase. In addition to offering creators and talent a platform to amplify their voices, the two also wanted to combine an evening of entertainment with foundational pillars like community and education. The networking mixer and special guest panels include “Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard” star Jasmine Ellis Cooper, Emmy-nominated executive producer and director One9 (“Time is Illmatic”), “Real Housewives of Atlanta” and “Potomac” executive producer Eric D. Fuller, “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” producer Jessica Hubert and “Zatima” actor Guyviaud Joseph.
The goal was to facilitate a free flow of ideas between A-list talent and individuals people may not be familiar with yet, all in the same space.
“We wanted people who we knew weren’t going to come in here from a diva standpoint,” Cally says of friends and celebrities they contacted, “who were willing to touch the people and interact, and had something interesting to speak on.”
That reasoning also extends to the powerful short films that were selected to screen at the showcase, two of which Cally and Wilds helped create.
“Spillover” — co-written by former cop William McGarry, directed by Cally, and executive produced by Wilds and Phil Tudeme, another former cop — delves into the complexities of community policing in the wake of a life-changing incident involving two lifelong friends and a white rookie cop.
“These are two cops who worked in some of the toughest urban neighborhoods, and they wanted to tell a story about that,” Cally shares, adding that he and Wilds faced resistance from some festivals due to the current climate around DEI. “We just wanted to help bring this story to life. We felt it was an important story that needed to be seen.”
“We’re seeing that the film is being a little bit suppressed in terms of how it’s treated… So, we’ll see how the audience reacts, and that’s how we’ll be able to tell if this is politics or if we just made a bad movie,” the director jokes.
Meanwhile, “Sincerely Brad,” directed by Isaac Yowman and co-written by Cally, features “Martin” alum Carl Anthony Payne and “Doc” star Patrick Walker in a short about an astronaut on the brink of becoming the first Black man on the moon — only to grapple with the personal cost of his historic mission. Rounding out the lineup is “333,” a deeply personal short written and directed by Naturi Naughton, which explores the emotional toll of womanhood amid restrictive abortion laws and the ongoing fight for reproductive autonomy.
According to Wilds, the projects weren’t selected solely for their social timeliness, but “the pieces just fit together.”
Cally adds that, while they hadn’t set out with an overt political agenda, the two came to realize, midway through planning, that their collective effort was, in fact, quite “radical” in spotlighting issues that are rarely granted nuance onscreen. It gave their showcase even more urgency and purpose.
“We were like, ‘Wow.’ All these conversations we were having were manifesting themselves into something tangible,” Cally remarks. “So, instead of just complaining about what the problem was, we started to make a solution. And before we knew it, we were like, ‘Oh, shoot, we’re actually solving our own problem.’”
Surrounded By Stories is taking its mission a step further this weekend with the inaugural launch of the Michael K. Williams Creative Fellowship, an initiative created in honor of the late “The Wire” actor with permission from his estate. Through this fellowship, the recipient will earn one-on-one training, mentorship, access to industry resources and even the opportunity to work on Cally and Wilds’ film projects.
“Me and Mack both got to work with Mike at different times in our lives, and he became a big brother to both of us,” says Cally, who produced one of Williams’ last television projects, Vice TV’s “Black Market” series. “We’re getting ready to give back some of what he gave to us, which was something that he was really proud about.”
He adds, “Michael K. would say, ‘Yo, call me big bro.’ So we get to tell this young person, ‘We big bro,’ for the next year.”
Discussions around the next Surrounded By Stories showcase haven’t started just yet, but Cally and Wilds are committed to making it an annual celebration of film and Black artistry — if not to entertain, educate or inspire, then at the very least to “keep open spaces for our stories.”
“They’re gonna try to delete our stuff as much as they possibly can. They’re gonna try to delete our history and our narrative,” says Wilds. “But just as fast as they delete it, we just have to constantly make more so that the people can hear our stories.”
“New York being the city that it is, it feels like it’s about time for Black artists, for our people, to have a space where they can show up, show out, and not have to worry about the back-and-forth of what it means to make art,” Wilds continues. Just have a day to celebrate each other, celebrate yourselves, and just enjoy art.”
Surrounded By Stories is just getting started. And with a clear vision to uplift a new crop of creatives, Cally sees it as the beginning of something even bigger.
“So, if you have the means to be there,” he says, “come through, have a good time, wear something nice, and we look forward to meeting you.”
Tickets for the Surrounded By Stories film showcase are available here.
Read the full article here
