In this Microfilm Series from Edge Studios, writer and director Saphia Suarez proposes three tenets for people of color in the nonprofit sector. In the first microfilm installment, an overstepping funder is tried in a reparations and restoration trial. In the second, a group of friends discusses how people of color are raising the standard. In the final microfilm, a young production assistant is met with the unlikeliest of workplace environments: a space committed to a culture of generosity.
Cyndi Suarez
Hello.
Saphia Suarez
Hey, it’s good to be back home.
Cyndi Suarez
Good to have you back home. People may not know that you are my daughter, but this is Saphia Suarez. And she is the writer, director, executive producer of the microfilm series that we just launched at NPQ out of Edge Studios. And we’re going to tell you today a little bit about what led to that.
Saphia Suarez
Yes…it was a long time in the making. So there’s so much pre-production that happened that we haven’t talked about before.
Cyndi Suarez
So, when did it start for you?
Saphia Suarez
Well, I’ve been studying theater since I was 10—at first as an actor and then, eventually, as a writer and director—and studying film. I began studying film in college, but in terms of exploring performativity and power and thinking about stories in the nonprofit sector, that really came about as you transitioned into NPQ, and as you finished your book, and as we began talking about power, performativity. And I think that happened because as you were writing your book, we were thinking about how you can actually practice status shifts, how you can actually feel what different forms of power feel like and look like. And when we started talking about that, I told you that so many of the dynamics you were describing sounded like theater games that I would play to warm up when I was a part of a cast or part of a class. And really, just from there, we always kept each other in mind in our work and talked about what we were doing and how our fields intersected.
Cyndi Suarez
Right, right. And then we did the event in New York, which was the event that we did in 2020 to launch Edge Leadership, our R&D space at NPQ. And we decided to do a multi-track event where you can experience the agenda in three different modalities, and one of those was performativity. And we learned a lot from that event. We learned that performativity is a great and fun way to study power and that the shifts happened quick, more quickly. It was the part of the agenda that moved the quickest compared to the other two, which were semiotics and materiality, thinking and building. And so, we came back after that event and COVID hit, and we were being asked to really create a space to reimagine a lot in the field and in our work, and we started to do fellowships. And one of the fellowships was awarded to you to do a series of microfilms. And that was kind of like when it officially started. Before you started filming, which was last summer, we spent about six months and we held some sessions on Edge Leadership with the three ideas for microfilms that we had. So, do you want to talk about those?
Saphia Suarez
Yes. So, we wanted to do a film, something with film. We weren’t sure how long, how short, how many, but we knew we wanted to use that medium, and we knew that these films had to do some sort of work. And we were trying, we are building…
Cyndi Suarez
What do you mean by that? By work?
Saphia Suarez
That all media works on its viewer. And that’s I think the biggest power that art has. And so, we wanted to harness that power. We wanted to create a very specific kind of change in the minds of our viewers. And so, that change was, here is a culture that we could all step into if we just decided to. We wanted to create cultural principles. We decided…three is pithy.
Cyndi Suarez
It’s a nice number.
Saphia Suarez
Yes. And so, we could create three microfilms, and each one could enact a principle. And so, with that in mind, we just let it percolate, and we continued to talk as we always do about our work. I was finishing up my last year of college, studying theatre and film and doing similar work, creating films for my courses. And you were continuing to reimagine NPQ and stepping into your role as editor-in-chief and co-president. And the tenets really came fairly naturally out of conversations that we had when we came up against situations where we thought there has to be a better way.
Cyndi Suarez
Right.
Saphia Suarez
We thought the tenets sort of began to reveal themselves. And the first one was that Swinging Philanthropy Dick Is Indecent.
Cyndi Suarez
Right. And I think what you’re speaking to is, we were using the creative process. We knew that we wouldn’t figure it all out. We had a sense of where we wanted to go. It was based on a lot of interactions and data we had gathered previously. And we said okay, now that we know that, we’re going to see what emerges and see what are the three tenets or principles that emerge. And so, because we do talk—yes, Saphia is one of those key people that I talk to about the work—you were really good at capturing those moments, too, when I was talking to you about things that were being experienced in the field or that I was experiencing. And one of them was just some of the interactions with philanthropy that I was having or that other people were having. And I remember I had a series of weeks where I’d probably had one too many, and I called you really upset, describing the latest. And somehow, I said in the middle of all this, “It’s like swinging philanthropy dick!” And that’s how I was capturing the energy, the dynamic that I was experiencing.…I actually have access to philanthropy, and a lot of my friends are in philanthropy. So, it wasn’t like, you know, it was just how prevalent it is that even when it’s people of color, sometimes, there was just this dynamic that’s pretty, pretty common. And so, you picked up that term, and I remember you said, “That’s the first, that’s the first one.” And then we said, well, what about it? And we kind of kept talking about, well, what do we want to say about that? And then?
Saphia Suarez
Yeah, so…you said swinging philanthropy dick. That title was just so…it was such a hilarious, I think we laughed for about five minutes.
Cyndi Suarez
We then realized that satire was a really good medium, and that microfilm and satire together can really do wonders.
Saphia Suarez
I think that was the title, that was the moment where we said, this should be satirical comedy. We both love Jordan Peele’s work, and I think that was also an inspiration. That’s been an inspiration for me in my work, and I think influenced how we thought about how you can get your message across. Comedy works wonders.
Cyndi Suarez
And it also takes power away by naming it in a certain way…
Saphia Suarez
There’s something about laughing at something that takes away its power. When you realize just how ridiculous and hilarious something is, it doesn’t seem so scary. It doesn’t seem so powerful. So actually, we couldn’t even remember, we were trying to figure out before we sat down, what story was it? What exact interaction was it that got you to say, oh, my gosh, it’s like they’re swinging philanthropy dick? And there were so many that we thought, is it this one? Is it that one? We couldn’t remember the exact conversation, because it was such a prevalent theme in the sector, such that when these films were released, everyone who responded to them has said, oh, my god.
Cyndi Suarez
People laugh, normally. They are like, yes, this is definitely true.
Saphia Suarez
So, with swinging philanthropy dick, I took that image. Just the image of something like that, it was just so funny to me, and I’m a very visual person. And immediately, I thought, well, if you’re swinging philanthropy dick, that’s indecent. That’s public indecency. If you expose yourself in public, you’ll get arrested. And so, in this new culture that we’re creating, maybe swinging philanthropy dick is indecent. And maybe that is…
Cyndi Suarez
It doesn’t give you power. Yeah.
Saphia Suarez
And with that idea, I went off and wrote a few drafts of the script. We talked over each one, and eventually, we settled on a reparations court in which a funder has been charged with swinging philanthropy dick, and a reparation has to be made to the grantee who was subjected to this indecency. And we held sessions on the Edge platform, and we asked people to come and share what resonated about these principles, what didn’t, and what came up for them, and we mined a lot of wonderful stories. And I think…because of the titles, when people got together, the stories just flowed. And with Swinging Philanthropy Dick, there were a lot of stories, and we got that it resonated. And we wanted to sort of imagine, how do you deal with this? Which we didn’t quite have a story for yet. So that was sort of an imaginative process.…Not only does it not give you power, you have to come up against some form of our system of a jury of your peers. But we also wanted to imagine that. What kind of reparations are made when something like that happens? And that got us into our conversation of what will this film really look like? What story best tells its viewers, swinging philanthropy dick is indecent, and this is how we deal with it? And that’s when we thought of a reparations court…
Cyndi Suarez
And so yeah, just to share that this resonated, and it was vetted, and that these stories actually were all true stories. People may think that it’s really, I don’t know, not true. What did one of the actors ask you when you were filming, if this was a caricature?
Saphia Suarez
Oh, yes. So, an actor, the, the actor who played the funder who was being tried in reparations court asked how he should play the character. And he said, is this really satirical, sort of archetypal? And I said, no, no, this is just your average white guy. He really is passionate about his work. And he’s really committed. He really just truly believes that he knows this grantee’s community and her work better than her. And he believes he was acting in good faith, and there’s nothing actually satirical about him. It’s all true.…I like playing with that dry humor. And then in the second film, Mediocrity Is Not the Standard, again, came from a conversation, conversations we had. And that, again, I think with all of these, there were so many stories…that inspired that. But the idea was really that we kept talking about this phenomenon that we, and really, I think you, especially observed. As leaders of color are moving into positions of power in the sector, that there’s so much more that they are up against. So much more than the way we think of racism in sort of simple terms of prejudice, and there’s really a culture of white mediocrity. There’s this way in which white folks who, in some ways, set the standard for the sector, never questioned that standard, and are now being asked to open up how they imagine that the work can happen. And as people who have many brilliant creatives of color in our lives, seeing, hearing personal stories of friends, of people I think of as aunts and uncles and even seeing it in film and theater as that industry is being asked to shift, there’s this way in which we know just how vibrant our own culture is. And we see how there’s a culture of generosity, which gets us into our third film, but there’s a culture in communities of color that is so much, we think, more effective, of empowerment and joy and community support that would get us so much farther than the sort of stiff hierarchical structures of most organizations and of many industries.
Cyndi Suarez
Yeah, and I think for that one in particular, it was also that leaders of color were being judged by that standard, and oftentimes had way more than that standard. But that standard as a lens was hard for people to see that.
Saphia Suarez
Yes.
Cyndi Suarez
And of course, we tell the story of the person who was interviewed by many, many people, and didn’t get the job because they couldn’t believe that she could really be as great as she was. Which is a true story.
Saphia Suarez
Yes. In the second film as well, if we can say the story centers on a friend group that’s come together for after work drinks and are venting, and they all work in the sector, and they are sort of venting about their days. And the action really starts when one of the characters comes in from a day’s work in which they were asked to sort of lead an anti-bias training at a care center where the head nun—this care center was a Catholic center run by I guess a nunnery—and the head nun who had really ignited the conflict that required the anti-bias training had run out of the training before it could start and up ended the entire day for this character. And so that story is true.
Cyndi Suarez
Right. They’re all true.
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Saphia Suarez
And I mean, both of those stories, that was a session where Mediocrity Is Not the Standard, we had this idea, and there was no image. That was one where I really came to the group, and I said there’s this idea. There’s not an image that’s come to my mind. Do you have any stories?
Cyndi Suarez
And they did.
Saphia Suarez
And they did. And there was so much more.
Cyndi Suarez
Right. Do want to talk about the last one?
Saphia Suarez
Yes. We had created these two principles that showed us what this culture was not, what was not allowed. Mediocrity was not allowed. Swinging philanthropy dick was not allowed. And now we were wondering, what is it? And again, this culture of generosity came up…I remember that that came up in our conversations after I had worked with a Black film collective in New York that was made up of some of my idols, some of the best Black filmmakers I think that are working right now. And when I stepped onto that set, I was a social media consultant. And I stepped onto the set just to meet the team, and the way that I was brought into that space and welcomed by the two head producers who were running a whole, whole thing—whole show, had been up for 36 hours—the way in which I was immediately welcomed, brought food, introduced to everyone…one of the main sort of founders of this collective was sitting to my left getting his hair cornrowed. This was this person whose show I had loved watching, and he was just sat on set, half of his hair done, getting his hair braided, talking. Terence Nance, who created Random Acts of Flyness, was just sitting down the table, and the collective is called the Ummah Chroma, and Nanette had brought me in and had just said, “Hey, have you met Terence?” And it was just such a stark contrast to what I had witnessed in white spaces, on film sets, and with industry professionals, during my time in college studying film. And in those face-to-face interactions I have had, this was the first one where I felt so enveloped in love and joy and warmth from people I had met just a few minutes ago. And their work is brilliant, they are really at the edge and are creating some of I think the best work right now in this Black Renaissance that we’re seeing. And so, the fact that that film set did not have to be sort of cut and dry with a production coordinator and an assistant director that were driving hard, sort of…
Cyndi Suarez
It’s almost like it wasn’t driven by status differences.
Saphia Suarez
It wasn’t. Even the table that we sat at was just this long table where the producer’s assistant was to my left, and the producer herself was in front of me, and there was no hierarchy in the room. And again, it was the fact that the people running the set took the time to come in, welcome me, to walk me out as I left. It showed us that that culture of generosity that we have in communities of color, that we’ve experienced in the Black community, can be brought to the work. It can make it so much better. The fact that this collective of brilliant minds ran their set this way and created amazing work really, for me, upended the idea that I had been taught in a very white film department, that the production process really had to be to the letter, that everything had to be very mechanical.
Cyndi Suarez
Yeah…I remember you telling me about your experience when you went to meet them. And again, through our conversations, it struck us as meaningful story to capture. That that actually was something important and different that we could offer the sector. That this is a way of thinking about the work and being with each other that’s more laboratory, not status-oriented.
Saphia Suarez
Yes…we had a lot of fun in that conversation on the Edge platform in that ideating space, thinking about what that generosity, generosity fuels innovation, evolution, what that meant, and what it could look like as a story. But really, we were pulling fragments out of thin air, because I don’t think any of us had had many experiences to draw from in which we experienced that in our work.
Cyndi Suarez
Right.
Saphia Suarez
And so, again, we could tell, we knew it resonated, but a story didn’t really come out clearly from that conversation. And so, when I had that experience, it was clear that that was the story. That was the story.
Cyndi Suarez
Yeah, right…So, there’s three films. Yeah. And what more can we tell people about them?
Saphia Suarez
I think something else in this process is just that as this resonated. It grew. This fellowship, it was a micro fellowship, these were microfilms. And as we saw how much they resonated, and we got so much interest, it grew. And as we stepped into pre-production, I had moved to New York. I had a network of people that I knew I could pull for the cast and crew. And it grew in the talent that we were able to bring together. And the process, I mean, we were thinking during COVID that I would film it here my childhood home, in your home….it would be fairly…
Cyndi Suarez
Yeah, low key.
Saphia Suarez
Low key. And it grew into so much more, and it grew into really a professional set and a really fun process that we learned a lot from.
Cyndi Suarez
Yeah, that’s right, it did grow pretty fast. And you’re such an amazing scriptwriter, I have to say. I think your ability, probably from growing up around the work, to capture those moments, to create amazing dialogue in a very short period of time—because these films are no longer than five minutes each—to capture all these tenets in those few minutes is amazing. So, I think the fact that when you put those scripts out there and the call for a cast and crew, we had such a response, I think was just another continual response from the field that people really wanted this.
Saphia Suarez
Yes, and I mean, thank you for saying that. But really…I think we created the stories before I ever put them down on paper. So, having those conversations with you between scripts drafts, we would get the story, and then I would go. I didn’t have to do, again, what I was taught in school of just sitting in front of the computer and just forcing myself to write. It was through our conversations and through our experiences that stories came out that were then very clear in my mind, and easy to sort of transcribe onto paper.
Cyndi Suarez
Yeah, they were so amazing. And so, then I remember COVID happened, you were in New York and trying to film. And, actually, just to back it up a little bit, I remember you put a call out, I think it was on Instagram, for cast and crew. And you called me right away. I think within an hour, you were like, Mom, we’re getting all these responses! There’s all these people responding! People with agents, right? So, that was pretty wild.
Saphia Suarez
Yes! Again, when we thought this was going to be small, I put out the call. And we had this whole response, and I realized that just from friends and friends of friends, networks from film and theater and actors that I knew, that we had our cast and crew pretty quickly. That we had our choice of cast and crew, really, and that everyone was really sort of just assuming that this was a professional level production. And again, that got me thinking about, who’s my director of photography? Who’s on sound? Because I had been taught those skills in school, and I had really learned how to do it all myself during COVID, finishing my studies, but I had not thought that we would really just get a full-fledged crew in particular, and that we would get so many actors interested that we’d have to make some tough decisions.
Cyndi Suarez
Right. So, I remember that’s actually part of how it kept growing. So, you called me and said, well, now we have professional cast and crew. Can we pay them?
Saphia Suarez
Yes.
Cyndi Suarez
Right. And I said, “Well, it’s COVID, and we’ve been trying to figure out how to support arts, so yes, of course.” Then we gave another grant to actually pay all the cast and crew for their time. And that made it even more official.
Saphia Suarez
Yes, absolutely. I think with my actor friends of color, in college, mostly in theater, the scripts we were most excited about were the scripts that were telling stories about our communities, that were telling stories that were complex as they related and dealt with race and class and status. And so, to have films of that nature, too, was exciting to people. And a lot of those friends, as they’re making their way in New York, they’re doing a lot of auditions, and they’re auditioning for Snicker’s commercials, and…they’re doing commercial work, and you don’t always get to choose what kind of stories you get to tell. So, I think the nature of the work, definitely, and the stories excited people.
Cyndi Suarez
Which reminds me, this is the typical way of doing it, right? Working your way up. Which is something that you originally thought about doing when you were graduating. You were like, I’m gonna move to LA and work my way up. And I said, well, no, let’s just do it. Right? So, it was also pretty unusual to have someone as young as you doing this kind of work.
Saphia Suarez
Yes, I think maybe that was why…when people responded and they’d ask, what is the compensation and…yeah, I really stepped into a producer role that I had not been in before. I had always been the writer, director, actor—not often all at once, but one of those three roles—and because we still kept it, it was still a micro budget.
Cyndi Suarez
What’s the budget? Do we want to share it?
Saphia Suarez
Yes, the budget was originally $10,000. It did have to be stretched to $13,000, but that’s considered a micro budget for a film process, because filming is so expensive.…because of the fact that I was making this call and I was filming in New York, I think there was an assumption maybe that I had producer experience as I was leading this project. And I was really learning from the members of the cast and crew and from my mentors in college as I designed that process. And it was also all very fast. We wanted to finish it by the end of 2021, which did not happen, because omicron hit, and we had to postpone our filming. But yes, I was taught that…the best way to go about breaking into the industry, especially as a writer or director or producer, was to go and work at a talent agency in LA, work my way up, get on an agent’s desk, find my connections, and get up the ladder. But I had spent the last year or so learning how to run a small set by myself because of COVID restrictions. And I had so many talented friends. And some of those friends were just making their own work, and it was really beautiful. And that was inspiring as well. And I thought, you know, a micro budget, talented friends, I can start doing this work now. I don’t have to wait for somebody else’s permission, somebody else’s budget. Running the set…I learned so much about what you need to create films. And what you need…if you’re creating the structure yourself, and you’re not working with a studio or a production company. There’s so much.
Cyndi Suarez
From finding a studio set in New York, to…
Saphia Suarez
Yes, the thing I learned is that if I were to do it again, when I do it again, someone else will produce. What I learned is that you really need people you trust, you really need a great producer, great production coordinator, and that when you’re directing, you should really just be directing. So, I think next time around, I will bring a producer in from the beginning. At the beginning, again, we weren’t thinking it would be so big. But a producer and people that you trust and work well with. This was a really fun team, and I think we worked really well together, especially given how spontaneous it was. And so, seeing just how much easier that makes it made me realize, once you find the people that you want to work with you, really, there’s a reason why creative teams stick together.
Cyndi Suarez
So, what’s next?
Saphia Suarez
A lot is next. I think the response that we got from this series has propelled our thinking about what we can do in the future. So, we’re ideating about a studio, Edge studios, and what it would look like to have a creative space really dedicated to filmmaking and continuing to create films that really do change work and continue to reimagine how we interact, not just in the nonprofit sector, but how we interact in our world and what we are hoping to create as we think about how to reorganize ourselves as a society. Keep an eye out. There is more to come, and there will be ways to follow Edge Studios, in particular, and this work as it develops. We hope to see you very soon.
