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videos a marketing tool? A creative endeavor? Some
hybrid of the two? Before long, the answers to those
questions did not seem to matter. Music videos made
artists more accessible to their fans. They brought
dimensionality to music and became not only their
own genre but a showcase for directors to express
their craft in short form.
Matsoukas’s video work reflects all the trappings
of hip-hop videos—beautiful women scantily clad,
their skin dewy and clear, flashy cars, gold chains,
masculine swagger and braggadocio—but amid these
trappings Matsoukas always articulates her aesthetic:
brightly saturated color, vivid imagery, the artist at
the center of the frame always establishing a video’s
center of gravity. Black people and black communities
are shot with profound respect. Her directorial style
is confident. She is unafraid of revealing her influ-
ences. She tends toward the referential.
For a video like “Sensual Seduction,” by Snoop
Dogg, she uses visual wit and a throwback aesthetic.
Rihanna’s “Rude Boy” references dance-hall culture,
the art of Warhol and Basquiat and more. In Beyoncé’s
“Pretty Hurts,” Matsoukas crafts a powerful state-
ment on the price women pay when trying to conform
to rigid standards of beauty. She can be just as vision-
ary interpreting the ethos of a brand in her commercial
work. In “Change Lanes,” for Lexus, her camerawork is
frenetic, the imagery stark yet vivid. Her “Equality”
video for Nike, starring some of the brand’s big-
gest stars—LeBron James, Serena Williams, Megan
Rapinoe—is more a short film than a commercial, shot
mostly in Cleveland with black-and-white, unadorned
imagery and sweeping tracking shots.
The narrative sophistication of her work expanded
exponentially over the years, eventually landing her
work as a TV director, including for several episodes of
HBO’s Insecure and two episodes of Netf lix’s Master of
None. But it was 2016’s “Formation,” part of Beyoncé’s
groundbreaking visual album Lemonade and the cul-
mination of years of innovative music videos, that
propelled her into a new creative echelon and opened
up more lucrative opportunities.
In conceptualizing “Formation,” Matsoukas
drew, as she does in all her work, from a broad andTRUE COLORS
“I like authentic
portrayals of life and
finding the beauty in
that,” Matsoukas says.
JW Anderson dress
and Matsoukas’s own
jewelry. Opposite:
Prada coat, sweater
and skirt, Gentle
Monster sunglasses,
Panconesi earrings and
Matsoukas’s own hair
clips, bracelet and rings.eclectic range of source material—everything from
Toni Morrison to the film Daughters of the Dust. The
resulting video transcends the genre: a soulful and
artistic meditation on the triumphs and tragedies
of blackness, set to a killer beat. “Formation” was
shot over four days and, after winning a Grand Prix
for Excellence in Music Video at the 2016 Cannes
Lions Awards, became a resounding declaration:
Matsoukas was ready to make the challenging and
often fraught transition from short to long form.
Matsoukas first came to Queen & Slim through
actor-writer-director-producer Lena Waithe, who
co-wrote the critically acclaimed “Thanksgiving” epi-
sode Matsoukas directed for Master of None. Waithe
said she had a project for her, and though Matsoukas
doesn’t like to make professional decisions based on
personal relationships, she read the screenplay and
knew she had found the right feature film to direct.
“I was looking for something that spoke to me,”
she says. “I was looking for something I felt was
political in a way that had something to say, that was
strong and unique and powerful.”135Queen & Slim, which comes out November 27, is
an astonishing debut, every frame resonating with
Matsoukas’s distinct point of view. The screenplay,
written by Waithe, is intricately drawn and lyri-
cal. Reviewers will be tempted to compare Queen
& Slim to Bonnie and Clyde, but the similarities
between the two are skin deep. Queen and Slim
go on the run to save themselves from becoming
statistics, not because of any inherent penchant
for criminality. The artistry of the movie and the
harrowing political reality it dramatizes resist
facile comparisons. It stands unto itself.
A page in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, her incisive
book of cultural criticism published in 2014, offers
a remembrance of black people who have been mur-
dered, most of them by police. In Memory of Jordan
Russell Davis, Rankine writes. In Memory of Eric
Garner. In Memory of John Crawford. In Memory of
Michael Brown. In Memory of Laquan McDonald. In
Memory of Akai Gurley. With each new printing,
more names are added to the page, a haunting and
ever-growing memorial. It is within this contextthat Queen & Slim opens. A young black couple
meet at a diner for a first date. Afterward, they are
driving home, sharing that awkward energy of a
relationship that will never be, when they are pulled
over by a white police officer. Things escalate in
ways that will be all too familiar to a black audience.
From there, the tension continues to build and build
inexorably. I spent the rest of the movie holding my
breath, hoping that somehow a new narrative for
blackness could be written.
The film reflects the diversity of black America,
from Slim’s devout and tightknit Cleveland family
to Queen’s veteran uncle in New Orleans. Matsoukas
lights black people in the glory of their black skin.
One of the most refreshing aspects of the film is that
white people are held to the margins. They have
few speaking roles. The movie makes clear that this
story is not about them.
Despite the inherent tensions of Queen and
Slim fighting for their lives, the film is also a love
story. The farther south they go, the more Queen
and Slim warm to each other. “I wanted to havetwo dark-skinned people love each other and see
the beauty in that,” Matsoukas says. “I wanted
young girls to see themselves in Queen and know she
was stunning.”
Verisimilitude was important to Matsoukas
because, as she notes, “I like authentic portrayals of
life and finding the beauty in that.” To find as much
beauty as she could, Matsoukas shot the entire movie
on location; no sets were built. The South, from the
humid languor of New Orleans to a back-road juke
joint to the balmy ease of Florida, is as much a char-
acter in the film as any of the leading roles.
“I wanted the narrative to go from feeling very
cool to warming up as their relationship warms up,
visually paralleling what they’re going through,”
she says. “And I always loved the idea that it’s kind
of the reverse slave-escape narrative. They’re going
south instead of north.” Setting was not the only
consideration. She shot the driving scenes in real
cars so the actors could “feel the road to inform their
performances.”
The movie’s visual language is also carefully