‘Black Friday’ — an evening at the Hollywood Theatre centered around two films highlighting local Black entrepreneurs
The lobby at Portland's Hollywood Theatre was packed before doors opened the evening of Sept. 1. A crowd of 325 ticket holders plus guests gathered to celebrate Black Friday — an evening centered around two films highlighting local Black entrepreneurs of the past, present and future.
Local arts curator Zoe Piliafas produced the event, which featured a variety show of speeches, music and the film screenings. Piliafas said she wanted to draw attention to successes of the past and stir excitement for Portland's diverse economic future in a space where people could be comfortable and authentic.
"I wanted the space to feel like home," Piliafas said. "In home, you have conversations you wouldn't have in other places."
Piliafas previously managed other local history-based arts projects, including a massive mural at Alberta Street's Black United Fund and the Alberta Black Heritage Markers, an augmented reality art project marking the history of Black pioneers in the now-gentrified Alberta neighborhood.
Piliafas produced Black Friday alongside Devin Boss, a local filmmaker who narrated and directed both films. She said she wanted to uplift Boss and his work, to show people what he could do while creating a space intended for connection and story. Piliafas also helped produce the films.
Boss owns North East Production, a local production house that uses storytelling to increase the presence of Black people in the film industry. He grew up in northeast Portland and said he is honored to spotlight his hometown's creativity and innovation.
"We as Black people aren't even made aware of the dope things that we're doing throughout the city and the state," Boss said. "When I look at the ever-changing landscape of Black Portland, especially right now, I do see a lot of positivity in it, and I see us gaining more autonomy and gaining more strength and building a greater community."
Boss was a central figure in local racial justice protests in 2020 with the organization Rose City Justice. The nightly marches inspired a generation of young people to share their own stories of enduring racism in Portland, many of whom had never spoken in front of a crowd before.
"It was an opportunity during that time for people to finally be seen, and be heard, and be felt, and sometimes that's one of the most important things that can help somebody," Boss said.
Rose City Justice faced public scrutiny at the time for its cloudy financial records, and some local activists criticized the group's tactics. Boss said that time was a pressure cooker for him and one of the biggest things he’s learned since that time is how not to anchor so heavily in his own perspective.
"It's very much girded me for the stories that I need to tell now and in the future, and how we bring each other in together to tell one harmonious story that encapsulates all of these different stories," he said. "That's kind of one of the biggest things that I brought with me was my ability to kind of try and stay attuned to various perspectives within my community."
Highlighting various perspectives on what Black generational wealth means in Portland was a strong theme of Black Friday, as represented by the audience and the films. Piliafas joked that, in many ways, the event was a "marketing disaster" — she told event sponsors she expected the audience to be people anywhere between 20 and 80 years old.
"That's a tough sell," she said. "But really, it was about generations of Black people."
Boss directed and narrated the first film, “Geneva: A Woman,” a silver screen love letter penned (with help from Donovan Scribes) by Paul Knauls, the unofficial "mayor of northeast Portland," to his late wife, Geneva Knauls. She owned and operated the legendary barbershop Geneva's Shear Perfection on Northeast MLK Boulevard until retiring in 2001. Geneva Knauls died in 2014, but the shop remained open until the COVID-19 pandemic closed its doors in 2020.
Portland carries a weighty history of dispossession and gentrified neighborhoods built by racist policies. The construction of Interstate 5 and the Memorial Coliseum displaced many Black-owned businesses and homes in the early 1960s. In 1963, as Interstate 5 opened to vehicle traffic, Knauls purchased The Cotton Club — a music venue known for "wall-to-wall soul" on Northeast Williams and Russell Streets in the Albina neighborhood. Jazz legends like Duke Ellington, Sammy Davis Jr. and Cab Calloway came through the club during that time.
The second film, “Where We Goin',” centered around DJ OG One, the official DJ of the Portland Trailblazers. He said Paul Knauls and his family’s history is proof to many Black Portlanders that Black businesses can succeed despite profound structural challenges.
“He was the example,” DJ OG One said. “He was like, ‘Here's what it looks like to be a black owner of a quality business and be someone that is not only a business owner but who is investing in their community.’”
Black Friday featured Paul Knauls on film and stage, where his granddaughters joined him to talk about their late grandmother.
"I've always aspired to be like my grandmother — she's like the most beautiful being to ever walk this earth," Olivia Knauls said. "I aspire to be that amazing one day. To have such a huge impact on my community, to really just change the world one day like my grandmother did."
DJ OG One grew up in Watts, California and ended up in Sandy, Oregon in 1988 with the Ecclesia Athletic Association — a church group that moved from Watts to set up camp and train for the Cascade Run Off. Neighbors labeled Ecclesia a cult group, fearing it was similar to the Rajneesh Puram in Wasco County a few years prior.
After a national controversy broke up Ecclesia, DJ OG One became homeless in Portland, where he tried to navigate his way into housing while staying away from gangs and drugs.
"I decided that I didn't want to do that because I worked so hard as a young person to get away from the gang stuff that I knew the choices — if I made those choices, where that would lead me," he said.
He said he always used music to connect with a younger generation in Portland after getting out of Los Angeles neighborhoods fraught with gang and drug activity.
"I felt like I had some answers to some of the things that Portland was dealing with at the time," he said. “They were newly getting introduced to some of the gang stuff, and I felt like the city had a chance to control the narrative."
He started using DJing to incentivize kids to do well in school. Kids with good grades received invites to the parties he hosted, and word spread quickly around the city.
"One of the kids I was mentoring, their aunt was a local promoter and asked me, would I open up my first concert, which was for Run DMC and Naughty by Nature at the Roseland," he said. "That was my first concert. I was scared to death."
“Where We Goin’” follows Boss and DJ OG One in conversation as they tour the DJ's old neighborhoods and introduce him to some new Black businesses in Portland, like Creative Homies in Old Town.
Creative Homies owners Adewale Agboola and Cyrus Coleman bought the 20,000-square-foot Horizon Enterprise building in December 2021 to make a community creative space for Portlanders of color. The idea is to provide a safe, creative space for artists, musicians, photographers, directors and other creatives. It promises a music venue, bar, coffee shop, art gallery and classrooms for students and creative professionals alike. Creative Homies envisions a space where top-tier artists can perform when they tour through Portland or simply relax and talk in an intimate setting.
Coleman told Boss and DJ OG One about his perspective on generational wealth in the film. He said sharing knowledge, advice and opportunity is a way of passing on generational wealth to a younger generation — and not just as a monetary concept.
"I would not have been where I am without somebody to lean on for that knowledge, for that advice, for that opportunity," Coleman said. "And to be in a place to provide that for somebody else is like the ultimate full circle goal."
Coleman's father, Tony Coleman, had a long career as the drummer for blues legends B.B. King, Etta James and Buddy Guy. He still tours as a professional drummer.
“My dad’s been a big inspiration of mine,” Cyrus Coleman said. “I've always been able to see that example in him of him not like taking no for an answer and always going for his dreams and achieving his niche to the highest degree possible.”
At the film screening, the elder Coleman sat beside his wife, Sabin, in an aisle seat near the back of the Hollywood Theatre. When his son came on screen, he couldn't help but shout support for his son and his new venture.
"Do it, young man," he said. "Do it."
Locally known as Chinatown, Old Town was a hub for immigrants in the mid-19th century, and was a historically Black neighborhood as early as 1900. Cyrus Coleman said he learned of the history when they were in the process of acquiring the Creative Homies building, and he sees an opportunity to help share that history with people who gather in the space.
“Having that context, and that full circle realization that we're able to nod to that past, and be able to be supported in today's light, I think is really cool, and a really great opportunity to be able to like be a vocal box for that storyline,” he said.
DJ OG One did not see “Where We Goin’” until the Black Friday premiere. Although the film told stories from his life, he hopes his story can inspire other people — including the filmmakers — to reach their aspirations.
"This is great because I think it allows particularly young people here and people that might be struggling, particularly people of color, because we don't get to see Black excellence in front of us visually," he said.
After the films, Stephen Green, Pitch Black PDX founder; Paige Hendrix Buckner, All Raise CEO; and Marquita Jaramillo, Black Founders Matter Fund principal, discussed their vision of economic prosperity on a panel hosted by Cobi Lewis, Microenterprise Services of Oregon executive director.
Piliafas said businesses like Creative Homies, Hendrix Buckner's gratitude-centered flagship business ClientJoy, social justice apparel company Mimi's Fresh Tees and others can transform the culture through projects that flip traditional capitalism to support the arts.
"How do we create places to commune and laugh and create and move beyond the almighty dollar and how to achieve it?" she said. "But how do we get the almighty dollar while we do something that we love?"
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