We Are Parable, the London-based exhibition company that specialises in showcasing Black cinema through immersive events, is expanding nationally to meet the demand for year-round programming.
The company, founded by husband-and-wife team Anthony and Teanne Andrews in 2013, is putting extra focus on work in the UK regions with the We Are Here initiative, a programme of four films that are each screening four times in four cities across the UK. It kicked off with Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor’s queer migrant drama Dreamers at the end of November, and continues with screenings of Cal McMau’s prison drama Wasteman from early February, ahead of Lionsgate’s UK-Ireland theatrical rollout from February 20.
Working outside of London is not completely new for the company; it ran a Spike Lee film festival spanning London and Manchester in 2017, toured a barbershop pop-up in celebration of 1990s sitcom Desmond’s in 2018, and took preview screenings around UK venues and ran a nationwide BFI-backed project, Who We Are, in 2021. But now, consistency is the aim.
“Every time we’ve gone up to Manchester, gone to Bristol, Liverpool, wherever, the one thing we always hear is, ‘When are you coming back?’” says Anthony. “We were at the mercy of when films were going to be available, or whether we could get the resources to return. Whenever we’d go back, it would be three to six or maybe even nine months later, and we had to re-engage that audience.
“We thought, is there an opportunity for us to create a consistent programme of films that we know our audiences love?” he continues. “Not only sustaining the audience that we’ve already built but looking at ways to grow that audience across the UK and serve audiences that sometimes feel there isn’t enough representation of them on screen.”
Cinemas taking part in the We Are Here programme are Birmingham’s Everyman Mailbox and Birmingham’s Mockingbird, Leicester’s Phoenix Cinema, Manchester’s Home and Bristol’s Watershed. The programme received $110,000 (£79,700) of BFI Audience Fund support, and is running until March 2026, with F. Gary Gray’s 1996 crime thriller Set It Off, starring Jada Pinkett and Queen Latifah, and queer Black filmmaker Cheryl Dunye’s landmark 1996 Berlinale premiere The Watermelon Woman the final two films taking part.
“It’s a very personal project,” notes Edinburgh-based Carmen Thompson, We Are Parable’s head of distribution and special projects. “Living outside of London, I know what it’s like for audiences. I can only speak for Scotland and how underserved we are in terms of Black cinema programming.
“One of our slogans is moving towards an ‘always on’ approach to cinema programming when it comes to Black film, as opposed to one-off events around Black History Month, as if it’s siloed and happens outside of regular programming. There is such a huge appetite for this.”
“We didn’t want these events to feel like this big, bad London organisation coming in to tell Manchester and Bristol how to run events,” says Anthony. “What we wanted to do is make each event feel regionally specific and authentic.”
To achieve this, We Are Parable is working with ‘cultural curators’ based in each of the four cities and embedded within the local communities, to bring an authentic connection with the area to the events. This ranges from collaborations with local businesses, as in Manchester, where a Nigerian caterer made puffpuff (a West African fried dough snack) for audiences, to a talk in Leicester, where two queer people with experience of seeking asylum in the UK and living in Leicester spoke at the screening of Dreamers.
The four cultural curators are Anton Leon in Birmingham, Khara Linton-Salmon in Manchester, Leonie Bell in Leicester and Nathan Hardie in Bristol.
“A lot of the audiences we’re trying to reach have not previously engaged with the spaces we’re trying to bring them into, because the programming has not been there for them before, so they haven’t felt like those spaces are for them. [We have to do] a lot of undoing,” adds Thompson.
She also notes that audiences have so far skewed younger, and events have attracted emerging filmmaker talent keen to speak directly to Gharoro-Akpojotor. “We can’t forget what it means for young, emerging talent to see themselves represented in a director, and see the possibilities,” she says. “People were taking their shot, asking if they could be a runner on her next film.”
The aim is to turn We Are Here into a multiyear project and expand into more UK cities. “This is essentially a proof of concept. We want a consistent level of Black cinema programming around the UK,” says Anthony.
“We want to continue that commitment, not just for a season or in the short term, but all year round,” adds Teanne.
Scaling up
We Are Parable has grown its output since Anthony and Teanne founded it over a decade ago. The company is regularly supported by the BFI, and has partnered with studios and distributors including Netflix and Warner Bros on cinema events. These often include additional elements such as spoken-word poetry, musical performances and DJ sets.
Anthony was elected deputy chair of the Bafta film committee in September, and We Are Parable has built a direct distribution arm, most recently releasing Dreamers in UK-Ireland cinemas, as well as Banel & Adama and Earth Mama.
The team has also grown to five, with help from $70,000 (£50,000) of support from a UK Global Screen Fund international business development award in 2023, hiring Nessa Chileshe as marketing manager and Aleah Scott as events co-ordinator.
Could acquiring their own exhibition space be on the horizon? “It’s crossed our minds,” admits Anthony. “I’m not sure it’s something we want to do right now, but it’s exciting to work with Mo Abudu, who is creating her own Vauxhall cinema.”
Abudu, the Nigerian producer and founder of EbonyLife studio, announced last year that she has acquired a space in south London with plans to turn it into an African creative hub, including a cinema. “We want to see how she does that and how we might connect with the EbonyLife team and understand that market a bit more,” confirms Anthony.
The thread that runs through all of We Are Parable’s work is careful grassroots engagement with communities who may otherwise have felt detached from cinema spaces.
“The challenge we sometimes have with various gatekeepers and people we work with is the desire for quick results and quick successes,” observes Thompson. “We’re definitely committed to, and have a deep understanding, that it takes a long time to build trust with audiences, and to get them to come on the journey with us.”
“There is a deep care about the films that we choose to work on, how we work on them, and how we position them to audiences,” says Teanne. “That’s something that we will continue to take with us into the new year and beyond.”
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