In 2016, her video for Beyoncé’s “Formation” won every award under the sun — including a Grammy and a drawer full of VMAs — and she served as an executive producer and primary director of “Insecure,” created by noted Beyoncé fan Issa Rae. Scripts for potential feature films soon found her, but none moved her initially.
“It was like, ‘Oh do you want to shoot this musical?’ Or, ‘Do you want to do this dance movie?’ — things that people would think were obvious,” Matsoukas said, in a recent interview. “None of it sounded very interesting to me, and so I waited.”
“Queen & Slim,” the story of two strangers whose first date is dramatically extended when a clash with a police officer sends them on the run, got her attention. Matsoukas had worked with Waithe previously on the Emmy-winning “Thanksgiving” episode of “Master of None” and was excited by what felt like a step in a genuinely new direction.
“It was dramatic and it was a comedy and it starts off as almost a horror film,” she said. “It straddles the line between so many genres of filmmaking, and I found that really intriguing and fulfilling.”
Matsoukas discussed where she found inspiration for the movie’s many moods, from fine art photography to footage of Sandra Bland’s 2015 arrest. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
‘Belly’
This is my go-to. I’m such a huge fan of Hype Williams and was very much guided by how he photographed black people and black bodies in motion: very beautiful and real but also stylized. For me, “Belly” had all of the elements of the culture in it, visually, musically, and aesthetically. I’ve always wanted to try to create the same thing in my work.
For “Queen & Slim” I especially looked to it as a lighting guide and a portraiture guide. Our movie opens with a diner scene, and in “Belly” there’s a diner scene between DMX and Nas. I remember looking at that and really loving the light on their skin and how the fluorescents were kind of reflected off it. I’m really conscious of how we light black skin. There’s a belief in the industry that black skin needs an incredible amount of light or a certain traditional way of lighting in order to be visible, and it’s just not true. I kind of threw all of that away and just let people live in the environments.
Deana Lawson
I love the way she captures the everyday black experience through a very intimate lens. I think it’s really powerful. There’s a sequence in our movie that takes place at Queen’s Uncle Earl’s, and I probably used her photography as a reference for that whole house. The way she shoots homes and the people in their homes with their real possessions, the possessions tell the story of who those people are. I actually have a piece of hers in my living room, so she inspires me every day. I like things to be rooted in authenticity and what’s real, and then to try and sell that in a really beautiful way, even when it’s ugly, even when it’s dirty.
Birney Imes
He has a book called “Juke Joint,” and that definitely was an influence not only on the juke joint scene in our movie, but on some of the Americana scenes as the car is driving through the South. He just has an incredible eye and is really able to capture black Southern life in a way that takes in the nuances and history of the landscape.
‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’ and ‘Taxi Driver’
I looked to these two movies for so many of the driving scenes. A lot of scenes take place in a car, and that was a major challenge. I wanted to give them a real progression so that we weren’t just repeating the same angles and the same shots. And I wanted you to be able to feel Queen and Slim’s intimacy and their connection growing as the road trip advanced.
I knew I wanted to be in the real spaces and not on a stage using video projection. I wanted them to feel the pavement moving beneath them and see the passing landscape. It’s difficult being in a car and locked up together for that long, and you can allow those emotions to effect how you deliver a line, or how you touch someone or don’t touch someone.
Footage of Sandra Bland’s Arrest
I watched that many times to understand who she was, and who she was in that moment. I wanted to try and characterize Queen in a similar way. I’ve been in that scenario myself, where I was pulled over in a senseless traffic stop. I felt like I wasn’t going to hold my tongue because I was in the right and needed to stand up for myself as a person. You want the officer to see your humanity. And he couldn’t see Sandra Bland’s humanity; all he saw was a black woman getting loud with him. But she was standing up for her rights.
This article originally appeared in
.