IN MEMORIAM: Rod Gailes OBC, Sergio Mims, and Kaleber Soze
by Curtis Caesar John
founder of The Luminal Theater
It’s been a rough month here in the Black cultural space, and definitely for us here at The Luminal, as we’ve lost three friends who all made their distinctive and highly memorable marks in the film world.
Kaleber Soze, like all these good brothers, was a multihyphenate. As a rapper he had a dope flow and in August just released his newest album, the iller elite, produced entirely by fellow Long Islander DJ Concept. Give it a listen here. If you like raw NYC hip-hop, you’ll love this (my favorite is Tape Deck, and Amnesia is a banger too). But we became friends after he appeared in my first ever narrative short film A Little Bit of More, playing Shane, the mean-spirited boyfriend to our protagonist Zemira. The short was a proof-of-concept for a feature film I was never able to raise the funds to make, but Kal and I remained friends ever since.
(left to right - Kaleber at the A Little Bit of More private screening with Curtis, co-stars Marjuan Canady and Rob Morgan, and screenwirter Mecca Woods), 2011
Kal’s dark turn as Shane was a true departure from the role he’s known best for, as the lovelorn Parrish in Tony Clomax’ award-winning hit webseries 12 Steps to Recovery. In the romantic comedy, actor and jingle writer Parrish was recently dumped by his girlfriend. In order for him to recover from the heartbreak, his two friends Dani (Erika Myers) & Blue (Stephen Hill, who currently plays T.C. in the Magnum, P.I.remake) come up with a 12-step plan: setting Parrish up on 12 blind dates. However, each friend has ulterior motives in their selections, and the results are both funny and heartwarming.
the cook poster for 12 Steps to Recovery
Around the same time, he also co-starred in Nikyatu Jusu’s slick short film Black Swan Theory alongside DeWanda Wise (Netflix’ She’s Gotta Have It).
Kal showed real range in these roles, and in everything he did, and had true passion and enthusiasm for performing. We wish his wife and family all the love and care in the world.
I never met in person or spoke by phone to Sergio Mims, but our communication via email or Facebook was always friendly and fun. Sergio was one of the smartest and humorous people I’ve ever chatted with. I’ve also heard he was quite the charmer, which doesn’t surprise me. I wasn’t familiar with him before he started writing for the original iteration of Shadow And Act, but became immediately impressed with his insight and knowledge on Black cinema and culture. Once I learned that he was also co-founder of Chicago’s beloved Black Harvest Film Festival, that made even more sense.
I just realized something…I’ve been saying for years that Black film curators like Sergio, like Melissa Lyde of Alfreda’s Cinema, like the also recently passed Michelle Matterre, like myself and so many others, what makes us so good at this is that we don't have to only be extremely versed in Black cinema, but in all cinema, and so our acumen, and care, puts us ahead of so many others in our field who mainly concentrate on the vaunted canon of cinema or the flavor of the year.
Michael Schultz (director, Car Wash, Cooley High, Krush Groove) and Sergio Mims at Indiana University Cinema, 2018
Sergio definitely fits that bill. He knew EVERYTHING about film, having been a voracious moviegoer since childhood - on Facebook he always commented on what theater he saw X movie at in 1973, or 1980, or whatever year - and obviously that informed his scholarship, his teaching, and his criticism. And this instantly made us brothers in the struggle.
One of the coolest things (among SO MANY) Sergio regularly did was providing DVD and Blu-ray film commentaries. From Putney Swope to Willie Dynamite (Sergio loved Blaxploitation films!) to the Michael Caine starring Gambit, to name a small few. To see some great remembrances of him, please visit RogerEbert.com, where he was a contributor.
Rod Gailes OBC was a royal figure. He commanded rooms, stages, film sets…wherever he trod. Rod is on the short list of people (as was Sergio Mims) who inspired me to create a stronger community amongst Black filmmakers. As a graduate film student in the 1990’s at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Rod was one of the few, but mighty, set of Black students of the program inspired by Spike Lee to also be a filmmaker - and what better place to go than the place that helped make that happen. But it was rough. I know the history, but I feel his great friend and collaborator James F. Richards, his fellow member of the NYU Black filmmaker collective The Leagues (coined in connection to the ostracized Negro League baseball teams) said it best in a remembrance:
“[Rod] wanted to create a space where filmmakers were free to explore the things that moved them, not what the industry demands of us as Black Filmmakers. He was on his own shit, and did exactly what he wanted to do. That bravery was infectious to me and I hope others who encountered him. He was helping us build the strength to be free, and the community around us that said "We got you kid" when we leaped off into the unknown, making a film that no one had ever seen before... Knowing there was a good chance your faculty would not comprehend what they were seeing. But we were not alone. We had The Leagues.”
Rod Gailes OBC (middle) on the set of the OBC DreamTheatre/Shadow And Act Film "Soft Focus". James F. Richards on camera and actor Damion Omar Lee
If he did nothing else, Rod’s legacy would have been secure as the co-creator of The Leagues (which also touts members such as Alrick Brown, Stacey L. Holman, Cinque Northern, Dee Rees, Nikyatu Jusu, Darius Clark Monroe, Randy Wilkins, Stefon Bristol, Nuotama Bodomo, and many, many others) - alongside George Stubbs. But no, he’d go on to work with MTV and Disney, wrote and produced stage plays like Unspeakable, inspired by the life of comedian Richard Pryor.
Rod Gailes OBC (2nd from left) in 2014 with up & coming Leagues filmmakers (l to r) Marttise Hill, Julius Pryor IV, and Brittany Fennell at the kickoff night for The Leagues Film Showcase: Celebrating New York University’s Black Filmmaker Underground, Sept. 11, 2014
But I knew him best for his short film work. Rod created his first film festival hit, the coming-of-age film Twin Cousins, then do a 180 degree flip with his future film projects, which include Earl’s Post Prison Playdate, Reverse Cowgirl, Soft Focus, and center, though unintentionally, on sexual themes. See a bunch of his work via his Vimeo page.
Rod explained the threads of what was deemed his “controversial” work in a June 13, 2012 Shadow and Act interview, “...I am almost always dealing with the notion of “Life” and “Choice”. I believe life is God's greatest gift to us, Choice being the second. Examining those gifts and how people manage the consequences of their actions is a recurring theme in my work on stage, screen, and in lyrics.”
I first met in Rod in 2009 when I programmed and produced the first iteration of New Voices in Black Cinema at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) alongside the also departed Aaron Ingram, whose ActNow Foundation provided the basis of the series (which in less than two years we turned into a film festival) and Tambay Obenson, who had only a year prior created the Shadow and Act film blog but had been an ardent supporter and distributor of Black cinema. We showed “6 Things I Never Told You,” Rod’s collaboration with five fellow The Leagues members, an anthology of six short films that each center on a significant landmark in the timeline of relationships that are either renewed, dominated or lost, but all longing for one thing: control.
From there Rod would always invite me to his own film showcases where often he would solicit feedback on his newer works, or simply center the creatives that helped make them happen. He was a cool brother like that, and his care for his fellow collaborators, for his community, helped to inform my own community building and curation to this day.