BFI Hosts First U.S. Celebration of Black Talent in Los Angeles

The British Film Institute (BFI), the UK's national film body, held its first celebration of Black talent in the United States in Los Angeles, and its chief executive used the evening to take aim at the debate over "woke" culture in Hollywood.

Ben Roberts, the BFI's chief executive, gave a toast at the event, A Celebration of British and American Black Talent, according to Deadline. He said "Woke is back" and "It never really went away."

Roberts described the work of BFI America as a handshake between the UK and the US. In his account, the job is to broker conversations and connections between film people on both sides of the Atlantic.

The evening was held at Gravillis Inc., a Black-owned marketing and graphic design studio based in Los Angeles. The company has designed movie posters for films including Challengers, Sinners and Michael B. Jordan's The Thomas Crown Affair. Its co-owner and creative director, Kenny Gravillis, co-hosted the evening. He also sits on the BFI's honorary council.

Melanie Hayes, the BFI's senior director of inclusion, said diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI, a set of policies aimed at widening access and representation) is a central tenet of the BFI's 10-year strategy.

The BFI's Black women's lunch in Cannes, the film festival on the French Riviera, started with 12 women. In its fifth year it had grown to 220 attendees, according to Deadline.

Deadline also reported that the BFI's diversity standards helped inform the standards later adopted by BAFTA, the British film academy, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which runs the Oscars.

The event sits within a wider debate in the industry about how studios and institutions should handle diversity programmes. Roberts's comments put the BFI firmly on one side of that argument, and the evening gave him a Los Angeles stage to make the case.