Kali O Ray, director of San Francisco Black Film Festival, dies at 48

At any opening night of the San Francisco Black Film Festival, Kali O Ray, its director, was at the door of the African American Art and Culture Complex in his sunglasses and dreads jutting out of his hand-knit cap.

From there, he would go to the stage to introduce a film then race to the projection booth to start it. He’d be back on stage at the film’s end, and finally, toward midnight, he’d be greeting guests at the after party at the Boom Boom Room on Fillmore Street.

The festival always opened on Juneteenth. It was always a long night, and he would do it again the next night and every night for the five-day festival. When the pandemic forced it go digital this year, Ray (also known as O Ray or O’Ray) designed the website and uploaded the films each day. He was indefatigable up to the moment he suffered a stroke on July 28. He never made it out of the hospital. Ray died on Aug. 7, at age 48, during the course of the virtual festival.

“Kali was at the heart of Black filmmaking in San Francisco,” said Jackie Wright, the festival’s publicist and a friend. “He was a bearer of light and took seriously the responsibility of bringing people from all races together to examine the positive stories about the worldwide African diaspora.”

That sense of responsibility derived from his mother, Ave Maria Montague, who founded the San Francisco Black Film Festival in 1998 to establish a platform for emerging independent filmmakers to share the African experience globally. A Fillmore community leader, Montague died in January 2009 after completing a radio project on the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Ray immediately took over the festival, ran it for 10 years and increased its profile by bringing in actors and directors like Danny Glover and Robert Townsend to help promote it.

“Kali picked up the mantle to carry on with his mom’s legacy,” said Mayor London Breed in a video statement posted to the SFBFF web site. “I am so grateful to have known and worked with Kali and will always remember him as a thoughtful and caring man.”

Kali Onaje Ray was born July 9, 1972, in San Francisco. His mother lived in the Fillmore district, and Ray split time between her home and the San Mateo home where his father Walter Ray lived.

He attended Park Elementary School and the San Mateo Christian Academy. After three years at Serra High School, he transferred to San Mateo High for his senior year, graduating in 1990.

In high school, he became a graffiti artist who used the tag “O’Ray.” His stepmother, Patricia Olivia Ray, was known throughout San Mateo as “the world’s greatest cook,” according to younger brother Kwasi Ray.

Using the kitchen of their church, Pilgrim Baptist, she ran a business called Catering by Patricia, and the brothers worked for her on weekends and after school, cooking, serving and washing dishes. Also pitching in was their best friend Jason Wilson. When they weren’t working as caterers, they sang in the church choir and performed in seasonal Christian plays.

“We were the Three Musketeers,” said Wilson, who now lives in Ione (Amador County). “We had no fear of anything when we were together.”

The Musketeers were only broken up by going to college. After what Wilson described as “an endless summer,” Ray finally went to Clark University in Atlanta, where he studied communications. He stayed in Atlanta and was building a career as a graphic and web design artist at the same time that his mother was building a film distribution company in San Francisco.

In a 2012 interview with the BayView newspaper, Ray described the SFBFF as starting with a mail-order video business that evolved into screening films in a theater.

His mother’s motivation was to combat stereotypes that “follow the lame format we are used to: the tired scene of us singing and dancing, cooning, playing maids and slaves, or worse, dressing as a woman for comic value,” he said in the interview.

“If you enjoy positive roles, stories that uplift the Black race in America, and film that you may never see anywhere else, then this is the festival you should attend,” Ray said. “We concentrate on breaking the mold in which African Americans and the diaspora are many times pigeonholed. This was my mother’s vision, and this is the vision of the SFBFF for life – and that’s a mighty long time.”

But not as it turned out for Ray or his mother. She also died of a stroke, which she suffered four days after the Obama inauguration in January 2009. She was 64.

Ray and his mother had discussed the possibility of moving the festival to Atlanta to take advantage of a larger Black population. But in the end, he decided it belonged where it started. He’d met his wife, Katera Crossley, in Atlanta, they moved into his mom’s apartment in the Fillmore Center, and he took over as director of the film festival, with Crossley as artistic director.

“Kali had layers. The man was busy,” Crossley said, noting that Ray was a photographer and videographer who was making a documentary film on the Filmore after redevelopment. He also produced the Salsa Festival at the Fillmore Center, managed several restaurant websites and worked nights as the doorman and DJ Greenlove at the Boom Boom Room.

“The Fillmore community was very important to him,” Crossley said

Ray’s work in promoting Black filmmakers reached much farther, all the way to Nigeria and South Africa where he had formed a partnership between the SFBFF and the Durban International Film Festival.

The SFBFF has been extended this year through Aug. 30, as an online offering. It will continue on, normally running in June at a variety of theaters and community centers.  Crossley will take over, along with Ray’s son Kali Jr. and daughter Cree, and Crossley’s son Ahmad Clayton. This will bring a third generation into the event.

“I know that the legacy he left behind with this festival will continue to serve young Black artists for years to come,” said Mayor Breed in the video.

Survivors include his wife and partner of 20 years, Katera Crossley of San Francisco, daughter Cree Ray of San Diego, sons Kali Ray Jr. of Atlanta and Ahmad Clayton of San Francisco, father Walter Ray, of Little Elm, Texas, brothers Kwasi Ray of Charlotte, N.C., Andre Johnson of Folsom and Darryl Johnson of San Francisco, and sister Rhonda McClinton of DeRidder, La.

“Kali loved life and lived it,” said Wilson. “He accomplished a lot for 48.”