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Oct 24, 20184 min read

Equitas Entertainment Partners: Making Films With a Mission

By Bel Hernandez

Equality in Filmmaking.  Making movies that make a social impact; give a voice to the underserved; and close the gender pay gap in front of and behind the camera. Not the kind of films Hollywood is known to make. However, for Equitas Entertainment Partners Paul Kampf, Holly LeVow, and Tom Sperry, this isn’t just a mission, it’s a core part of their business model, and they are proving it can be done.

The Equitas partnership principals are three like-minded individuals who came together in 2016.  LeVow, an attorney and businesswoman involved in high-tech startups; Sperry a venture capitalist also in high-tech startups and the adviser on financial matters; and Kampf, a 25-year veteran in the entertainment industry as an actor/director/writer/producer. Their first film, Best Fake Friends, released in 2016, was the catalyst for solidifying the kinds of films the three partners wanted to make.  

“It was Holly’s first time on set,” Kampf recounts.  “I like to work as a team and she saw that our set was so different from other sets. ‘How can we apply this mission in a production company?’ she asked’, and so the mission began.”

Their latest feature, Imprisoned, which stars Laurence J. Fishburne III (The Matrix), Juan Pablo Raba (Narcos), Juana Acosta (Velvet), Edward James Olmos (Mayans MC), John Heard (Sopranos), Jon Huertas (This is Us), Esai Morales (How to Get Away with Murder), and Ana Isabelle (Dementia 13) is set in Puerto Rico and centers on the themes of love, redemption, revenge, and forgiveness.

Part of the Equitas’ mission includes working within and making an impact on the community. It is with this in mind that Imprisoned will have a benefit screening on October 25, 2018, at the historic Egyptian Theater in Los Angeles, hosted by actors Morales and Lisa Vidal, both Puerto Rican. The screening will benefit Puerto Ricans in Action, and is a way of giving back to the island that welcomed their production with open arms a year ago last May.

Imprisoned was the last film to complete principal photography in Puerto Rico before the devastation of hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the island. The storyline was inspired ten years ago by Kampf’s theater work in minimum and maximum prisons, where he met prisoners sentenced to life, and the lucky ones who had turned their lives around and a new lease on life.

The story revolves around Dylan Burke (Raba) a former small-time criminal, who has put his dark past behind him. Having also found the love of his life, he now works as an open water fisherman, while Maria (Juana Acosta) runs a quaint seaport coffee shop. It is the idyllic life they both never dreamed they’d achieve. But when the local prison warden, Daniel Calvin (Fishburne), realizes Dylan is the man who caused his wife’s death twenty-five years ago, revenge reels its evil head and Calvin frames Dylan for murder and has him locked away under the warden’s charge.

Holly LeVow


Tom Sperry


Paul Kampf


Last year, Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló welcomed the production investment of $11.4 million as part of the island’s economic development in the film industry. Taking advantage of the tax incentives, the production hired several Puerto Rican actors and a mostly local crew.  

In preparing for the shoot, the production interacted intimately with current and former prisoners to explore how prison life might change an individual. Some of those prisoners and former prisoners ended up working on the film. “Imprisoned is a very dark film, it takes place in prison,” explains Kampf. “We explored Puerto Rico because I knew the island, so from a very dark place you look out and see all this beauty.”

Staying True to the Mission

When it comes to “closing the gender pay gap,” Equitas informed their female lead’s agent that she would get paid the same as her male counterparts.  The unheard of offer was met with incredulity. “People didn’t believe us…the agents laughed,” said Kampf. Gender equality pay matched with the opportunity to do the right thing, it should be the norm, not the exception.

Kampf and casting director Carla Hool painstakingly put together a formidable cast, which proved to be key to the production, helping to secure distribution even before the film was finished. However, once the distributor (who will remain unnamed) had the film, they planned for the Hollywood makeover.  “The distributor then wanted to take out the Spanish language and any cultural references,” Kampf recounts.  But Kampf and his partners were not having it. “We bought the film back at a significant price more. We didn’t make the movie to have a distributor say the right thing and then want to change everything.”

Equitas is hoping this might spark a different distribution conversation in Hollywood. They dare to ask “how can we do better” instead of “This is how Hollywood works.” The Partners are committed to promoting the idea that one can make a movie and make it profitable using their model of addressing social impact; giving a voice to the under-served, and closing the gender pay gap.  

Equitas will return to Puerto Rico for some poignant screenings. As Imprisoned  is basically a prison reform film, they have targeted three prisons in Puerto Rico for premiere screenings for the prisoners.  They feel it is important to go back to the prisoners, and not only screen the film but to engage them and have further talks about prison reform.

The Equitas partners truly believe stories can be entertaining, thought-provoking, socially responsible and fiscally profitable. However, it is still an unproven concept, and somewhat altruistic, especially in Hollywood, where decades-old filmmaking methods still reign. But Kampf and his partners are steadfast.

“We do believe that there is social currency and then there is a return in investment,” Kampf explained.   “We need to drop that pebble in the water and let it ripple out.”

With one film released in 2016 (Best Fake Friends), Imprisoned on the verge of release and another film in pre-production, it’s clear that as Kampf says, “We are in it for the long haul.”

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