Los Angeles has no shortage of events during BET Awards weekend, but few rooms felt as intentional as the one Rickey Castleberry built with Create the Writer’s Room.

“The reality of it is, if you’re looking to really progress in your career, you have to step out and be in places to actually meet people,” Castleberry told The Quintessential Gentleman. “Emails, they work, but not all the time. This is a place that’s cultivated by community, by like-minded filmmakers, studio executives, network executives, independent production companies; everyone’s here. It’s created a real, real experience.”

5 Film Fridays, the community-driven film series dedicated to connecting filmmakers, industry professionals, and audiences, hosted an evening of short film screenings, industry panels, and open conversation that set a different kind of tone for the weekend.

The night opened with a Mix & Mingle, and then developmental panels featuring representatives from Lord Miller Productions, Off the Wall Pictures, Paramount, and Amazon followed, offering a conversation on the current landscape for independent film and television.

Filmmaker Chiderah Uzowulu, who participated in the No One’s Waiting for Permission panel, spoke to exactly why those kinds of conversations matter right now. “It’s a beautiful time because it’s a tough time, but it’s a beautiful time in the sense that you can make whatever you want right now,” he said. “You have no excuse to not have some type of project, something, some type of visualizer that we can see.”

From there, the evening moved into six short film screenings: See You Soon by Jay Pendarvis Jr., Bukra by Alex Aljouni, Mirage by Jhanvi Motla, Bubble Pop by Aeryn Michelle Williams, Sincerely Brad by Isaac Yowman, and Halfrican by Vic Mensa, with a filmmaker talkback closing out the night.

The Create the Writer’s Room ecosystem also has a built-in pipeline. Through a partnership with Roku, short films that come through 5 Film Fridays have the opportunity to land on the platform, reaching over 90 million viewers across the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and beyond. “This is a pathway,” Castleberry said. “This is an opportunity for you to find other opportunities without just leaning on the traditional system.”

One of the evening’s most anticipated screenings was Halfrican, a short film written by and starring Vic Mensa. The project follows Mensa being detained by ICE and thrown into a detention center with a multiracial group of detainees, taking on the divisions within immigrant and minority communities while an obvious oppressive structure surrounds them all.

“It was born in my perception of the people’s response to ICE showing up in Chicago, attacking Black and brown people, and yet the division was still strong,” Mensa said. “I thought, how can I make light of this and also speak about the complexities of it.”

Halfrican also stars Olly Sholotan, whom Mensa connected with during Bel-Air. “He’s a transcendent actor and full-scale multi-hyphenate artist,” Mensa said. “His chops as an actor are unbelievable. I was so excited and so blessed that he was willing to jump on this project.”

For Mensa, the short film marks an expansion into independent filmmaking after nearly a decade of quietly developing his skills behind the scenes. “I’ve been writing screenplays and scripts for a long time,” he said. “All these things really feel the same to me. It’s just different skill sets.”

Also featured was Sincerely Brad, directed, shot, and co-written by Isaac Yowman. The film had sold-out private screenings in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston before the festival circuit, and 5 Film Fridays marked its first public screening since that run.

Yowman brought the same multi-hyphenate discipline to the conversation that defined his approach to making the film. “As an independent filmmaker, you’re putting the puzzle pieces together and building a plane in mid-air,” he said. “You got to be able to utilize all the resources.” His advice for other independent creators carrying multiple roles: invest in the right people around you.

“If you’re not willing to invest in yourself, you might as well quit whatever creative endeavor you’re into,” he said. “You got to invest and believe in yourself before other people invest and believe in you.”

Isaiah John, who starred in Snowfall for a decade, was also in attendance and offered a different kind of reflection during the evening. With a Snowfall spinoff, The Drop, coming in September, John spoke about what he returns to when the work gets heavy.

“I booked Snowfall when I was 20 years old. Now I’m 30,” he said. “So much life has been lived.” His advice for emerging artists wasn’t about the industry at all. “The more work we do on ourselves, it reflects in our work,” he said. “Don’t forget yourself in the midst of your art, because I’ve been lost in my art before, and I know what that can do to you as an individual. You have to start at the foundation and make sure you’re working on it.”

As Castleberry put it, the industry is changing, and it will keep changing. The point of 5 Film Fridays is to make sure independent filmmakers have somewhere to land in the middle of all of it. “We’re creating a timeline that fits within all the change,” he said. “This is an opportunity for you to find other opportunities. We fit within the timeline to help continue the journey.”

The next 5 Film Fridays is something to have on your radar. For more information, visit createthewritersroom.com.