“Queen & Slim director Melina Matsoukas on Jodie Turner-Smith, Beyonce - HOLA! USA” plus 1 more

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Queen & Slim director Melina Matsoukas on Jodie Turner-Smith, Beyonce - HOLA! USA Posted: 27 Nov 2019 10:58 AM PST There is no denying that Melina Matsoukas is talented, after all, she was the vision behind Beyonce's Formation. Combine that with how she was raised, and you get quality work with a purpose. "I come from a very multicultural family," the Queen & Slim director tells HOLA! USA. "My father is Greek and Jewish, and my mother is black Cuban and Jamaican. I was brought up with a real strong appreciation for culture and for people." Growing up in the Bronx and New Jersey, the Afro-Latina, whose production company is named De La Revolución Films in honor of her roots, also saw and personally experienced the social injustices in the world. "I was raised by very politically-minded parents who pushed me to have some sort of contribution to the world, to have some sort of contribution to creating equality and justice, to the injustices that so many of us encounter," she shares. RELATED: John Leguizamo explains how he is turning 'growing up super poor into a superpower' Melina Matsoukas comes from a multicultural family  It's a big reason why after reading the Queen & Slim script, written by the incomparable Lena Waithe, she had to say yes to her feature film directorial debut. The movie takes the viewer on a journey from an innocent first date leading to Queen (played by newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith) and Slim (played by Daniel Kaluuya) having to go on the run after killing a cop in self-defense. "It was provocative; it was political, and it had something to say," Melina notes. "It was a beautiful meditation on the black experience, and it was this beautiful love story while all just being a really entertaining story at the same time." In fact, the film out on November 27 by Universal Pictures and Makeready, already has had quite the buzz with Rihanna and Zendaya attending the premiere. "It really felt like the community raising us up and supporting us, and that's what we're about with the film," Melina acknowledges of a sort of pinch-me moment. "It was so good." Keep reading as Melina reveals why Beyoncé gave her her first big break, how breakout star Jodie Turner-Smith is redefining beauty and what makes Queen & Slim the perfect addition to her legacy. Melina with the stars Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya as well as writer Lena Waithe MORE: Alexa Demie on her first love, trauma and gaining back her spirituality HOLA! USA: This movie is going to change lives... Melina Matsoukas: "Well, hopefully that's the intention –to create a dialogue and to create some change, and we'll see what happens. I really enjoy how much it's resonating with people." What made you sign on for the project? "Lena Waithe. She and I did an episode of Master of None, called Thanksgiving, and she entrusted me with her really intimate, personal story about being a black lesbian woman and coming out to her mother. While we were working on that, she was writing Queen & Slim, and she asked if I would direct it. I told her I would have to read the script because I also don't like my relationships to dictate the work that I do. It was everything I was looking for in a first feature. It just feels like a beautiful piece of cinema, but at the same time it feels important and necessary." Everything you've done so far has such a powerful message to it. How important is it to you to be able to create projects that lead to conversation and social change? "I mean it's really the only way forward for me. And I always knew I wanted to make a mark and have a legacy and do something important, and I feel like with film it's so powerful. I really believe in the power of cinema and using that as a weapon for social change. And that's what I feel like we've done with Queen & Slim." Queen & Slim is as much a love story as it is a film calling for social change What are your thoughts right now on Hollywood's issue of colorism? Do you think that this film and people in front of the camera, behind the camera, you're igniting this change? "I think we're standing on the shoulders of so many filmmakers of color who have been discredited, who have not been appreciated and completely disrespected. There is no me without a Julie Dash, without a Hype Williams and without a Spike Lee. I think that we're amplifying the legacy in which they've built, and now we're hopefully supporting each other so that it can't be broken down, or our talents denied or our voices denied, and we're creating more opportunities for each other." You grew up in the Bronx and then moved to New Jersey. What was your childhood like? "I was brought up with a real strong appreciation for culture and for people. And I think New York is kind of that dutiful melting pot that only exists in that one place. I could also encounter all the different economic kind of structures as well. I'd say I still experienced injustices in our communities, and then moving to Jersey and having a very diverse community as well to kind of form and shape my ideas was really important in shaping the person that I've become today." Who gave you your first shot in Hollywood? "I would say that my first major shot, my music video career came from Beyoncé. I had done a couple of small videos before that, and she really loves to give opportunities to young artists and new voices. And she entrusted me with doing four videos on her album B'Day. From there my video career really was able to take off. Issa Rae was another very defining female figure in my career. She gave me a chance to direct and produce my first show, my first television series, with Insecure. And now Lena. So I feel like really my career has been shaped by my connection with black women. They supported me, and I would not be here without them." Rihanna was among the many stars who supported the film at the L.A. premiere RELATED: Diego Boneta on his life-changing Luis Miguel role Beyonce's Formation felt like a movie, but how different was it for you to direct a feature film? "Thank you! Well, I think that they're both meditations and celebrations of black culture, and that's obviously something I love to do. The approach is completely different when you're shooting a video that you are given a week to prep and a week to deliver, and you shoot for three days. This has been a two-year process from developing the script to delivering a final project." Jodie Turner-Smith is the true breakout star. What blew you away by watching her as Queen? "What amazed me was how strong she was against Daniel Kaluuya, who is an incredible talent and obviously has a lot more experience, and how she was able to really stand her ground and live in Queen's shoes and become royalty. She wears that crown. She is stunning. She herself is really defining beauty, I think, for so many young women because she is a reflection of so many of us. Also how she elevated and empowered Daniel's performance; I feel like they did that for each other. Without Queen there is no Slim." What are you working on next or are you taking a well-deserved break? "I am taking a break in the fact that I am working on developing two projects, one of which is based on my favorite novel called A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. And I'm developing that as a TV series on Netflix. And the other piece I'm working on is a film about Fela Kuti, who is the King of Afrobeat." Loading the player... Queen & Slim hits theaters nationwide on November 27.

How Melina Matsoukas Went From Music-Video Visionary to ‘Queen and Slim’ - Rolling Stone Posted: 27 Nov 2019 09:00 AM PST For a decade and a half, Melina Matsoukas has helmed moody, swoony, sexy music videos that subvert expectations by turning an idol's image inside-out — whether it's re-imagining Snoop Dogg as a keytar-wielding lounge act ("Sensual Seduction") or transforming Katy Perry into a grieving World War II widow ("Thinking of You"). Her strongest work, however, usually stars black women like herself — Rihanna, Solange, Beyoncé — who see themselves as fellow political-rebel artists. Take her instantly iconic video for "Formation," which recast the "All the Single Ladies" singer as a furious Aphrodite draped over a sinking New Orleans police car. The video — Matsoukas' 12th collaboration with her — capped Beyoncé's ascent from pop star to American goddess, and won them both the Grammy for Best Music Video. It also earned them an accusation from the National Sheriffs' Association of "inciting bad behavior." "I love to challenge the authority and the norms," Matsoukas says, a notion that her debut feature, Queen & Slim, doubles down on. A romantic thriller that pivots on police violence, the movie opens with a first date between two strangers (played by newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith and Get Out's Daniel Kaluuya). Then an aggressive traffic stop by a police officer turns fatal, and the couple is forced to go on the lam. As they zig zag across America in borrowed, and sometimes stolen cars, the media calls them murderers. But to most of the people they meet, they're scapegoats — maybe even heroes. It's a lush, vibrant vision that plays off an aesthetic she's honed in her shorter work; she even alludes to one of "Formation's" most powerful images, a young boy facing down a phalanx of cops. Clearly, Matsoukas is unbowed. "Their narrative hasn't changed, so mine won't either," the director says. "When that stops happening, then I'll stop making work like this." Matsoukas often speaks in equations, and it's hard for her to talk about her work without calculating how it impacts the world. She reckons that Queen & Slim, which gave her final cut and empowered her to hire other up-and-coming people of color — from the on-set photographers to star Turner-Smith — can launch a lot of other film careers. The exponential explosion of success doesn't just factor back to her, but to the people who supported her: Queen & Slim's screenwriter Lena Waithe, Insecure creator Issa Rae, Beyoncé. "I am who I am because of black women," says Matsoukas. "We're beginning to redefine our community — and hopefully our version of Hollywood." Her father, a half-Greek, half-Jewish woodworker, and mother, an Afro-Cuban, Jamaican professor, met through a socialist student group in New York City, and raised their daughter in the Bronx before moving to New Jersey. Journalists often refer to her dad as a carpenter, yet she prefers the world "builder," as in someone who can make anything if they just have the materials. With an extended family that included activists, Cuban maids, Upper West Side Jews, and a preacher grandfather who rode around Harlem on a white horse, her childhood home was "a wondrous collision of culture," says Matsoukas. "My parents raised me to create change. They are Communist believers, so they don't believe in organized religion, but we believe very much in culture and in food — Greek food, Cuban food, soul food, Jamaican food, all on one plate." Left to right: Jodie Turner-Smith, Daniel Kaluuya and Matsoukas on the set of 'Queen & Slim.' She entered NYU as a math major, but graduated with a thesis project on music videos — a change of lanes more parallel than perpendicular. ""An understanding of math or technology is extremely important in film," Matsoukas insists. "There's a chemical reaction happening on celluloid, both visually and literally." And as her Queen & Slim star Turner-Smith describes: "She's really forensic." On set, Matsoukas is a stickler for costumes, colors, details; just picking out the tiger-print dress and snakeskin boots Turner-Smith sports in the second half of the film was a calibration of ideas from blaxploitation films to superhero spandex to Alberto Korda's legendary snapshot of Che Guevara. "She's a true artist," says Turner-Smith. "Every frame is a still life." (See, for example, a shot of her actors sitting in a diner booth, which plays like a beautifully Afrocentric take on a Hopper painting, or a scene in which characters stand silhouetted against a burning car at dawn.) "My work in videos was completely disrespected. It was discredited. It was diminished," says Matsoukas. "There's just a stigma on video directors." Which is shortsighted, as music videos trained her to work fast, cheaply, and creatively. Take Rihanna's "We Found Love," which captures the entire arc of a disastrous relationship in four and a half minutes. Matsoukas primed the over-scheduled pop star and her faux British boxer to fake palpable, non-verbal chemistry — even though they didn't get to meet until the director called action. Get lost in it, she told them. If they felt like it, they could kiss. They did on the first take. "We Found Love" won Matsoukas her first Best Music Video Grammy in 2013, an honor fellow filmmakers Spike Jonze, Tarsem, and Little Miss Sunshine directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris also won early in their careers. "Formation" scored Matsoukas a second, tying her with David Fincher and Josephn Kahn. (Only Mark Romanek, at three, has more.) She knew she was ready for a feature. However, her idol — the hip-hop video auteur Hype Williams — has yet to be embraced by the film industry. "The black body is more celebrated in death than in life. How do we change that? By honoring them while they still have their breath, which we try to do with this film."—Melina Matsoukas "He is my Scorsese," says Matsoukas. Yet, Williams only got to make one film, the 1998 hyper-stylized noir Belly, before Hollywood rejected his vision of a fantastical, blacklight-tinged thriller starring an all-black cast. Belly has an 88 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but just 13 percent approval from critics, which Matsoukas calls, "sickening." Recently, Williams gave her the Wall Street Journal's Innovator award. Onstage, Matsoukas presented her trophy back to him. "I don't feel that it was right that I would accept something like that in his presence." Queen & Slim is fueled by a similar question: Can we honor black lives while they're alive? While fleeing from Cleveland to Cuba (it's a lovely coincidence that the script's vision of safety is her own mother's homeland), the couple become beatified as icons. Queen's Uncle Earl calls them "the Black Bonnie and Clyde," but Matsoukas wants audiences to think of Atatiana Jefferson, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice — real people who were posterized and flattened into something both more and less valuable than a human being. "The black body is more celebrated in death than in life," Matsoukas says. "How do we change that? How do we know it's not just a hashtag or a sweatshirt or an image? One way of doing that is by honoring them while they still have their breath, which we try to do with this film." "If you look at my work as a throughline, I obviously love to celebrate black culture and black people," she muses. "Someone's always rebelling against the status quo." The filmmaker means her stars, be they Beyonce or the Best Actor-nominated Kaluuya. But she's the rebel Hollywood needs.

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