The brilliance that is Queen & Slim has been described as a “for us, by us” film, with Black women Melina Matsoukas and Lena Waithe at the helm.
The Black excellence was apparent with Waithe telling ESSENCE that she and Matsoukas, who made her directorial debut with the feature film, didn’t use any feedback about their film from anyone at the studio who wasn’t Black.
The “Black out” around Queen & Slim didn’t stop there. In fact, while we were at the AFI Fest premiere last month, we met the CEO and President of entertainment studio 3BlackDot, Angelo Pullen and Reginald Cash. These two Black men are among the financiers behind the film.
Did anyone else feel the urge to lift their fist?
Pullen told ESSENCE, “This film, specifically is something we were really excited with. We got involved very early in the project and wanted to support Lena and Melina and their vision.”
“If you don’t put your resources and your talent where you mouth is, there’s lots of people that have a seat at the table that aren’t actually acting on it,” Cash said of 3BlackDot’s role in the blockbuster hit.
“For us to not only be able to produce and develop, but to finance this film to help bring it to fruition, in the way that Lena and Melina wanted to, in an uncompromised way, that was our role in it. We were just happy to enable that,” he added.
Meet Pullen and Cash in the video above, and of course we did the dirty work and made sure at least one of them was single!