On this episode we talk to Xenia Matthews about her fantastic short Ourika and tellings stories about Black women’s interiority.

Listen to “The White Meat Podcast” on Spreaker.

Here’s the transcript:

Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the White Meat podcast. I’m your host David Dylan Thomas, writer and director of White Meat, a movie with the following premise: Underneath Washington Square Park are buried the bodies of hundreds of enslaved people. What if one night they all came back from the dead as zombies, but they only ate white people?

So the short we made to prepare for that called White Meat Appetizer, is out and about at film festivals now. We’ve just had a really fun run, and it is continuing with Horror Fest Film Fest on September 24th in Wilmington. We’re gonna be one of the blocks that opens the festival. We’re gonna be virtually playing at the Richmond Film Fest, which starts on October 22nd.

We’re also gonna be in a 24-hour run of found footage shorts from the un- the Unnamed Footage Festival which is gonna be screening their online portion over, I think, October 2nd to 3rd. So we’ll be in that mix. We’re gonna come to Spooky Empire in Orlando over Halloween weekend. And our screenplay for White Meat actually got accepted at FilmQuest, which is a very big deal film festival. A lot of celebrity films are gonna be screening or premiering there out in Provo. That’s gonna start on the 22nd of October, so we’re gonna be out there promoting that.

And we’ve also been on a couple of podcasts. We were on Films at First Sight podcast talking about the new documentary called Black Zombie, which you should absolutely see. It’s in theaters now. It’s about the history of zombies and kind of their origins in Haiti conceptually and just how that’s played out over the years. Great documentary.

And then I was on a podcast called The Handbasket: Gender and Sexuality in the Trump Era, talking with my friend Brent Satterly about basically depictions of gender and race in horror and how that’s played out over the years.

A lot of great stuff out there, White Meat adjacent, and hope you can check all of it out.

For this episode though, we’re talking to Xenia Matthews, who created a fantastic short called Ourika which we will talk about in the episode. I don’t wanna spoil it. I guess also it’s not the easiest thing to describe, ’cause it’s really unique and special.

But like again, the Sundance is a very cool thing. But the reason I learned about it is because we share a producer, Stephanie Malson, who’s been on the podcast before. She’s our amazing producer, and we spend a good deal of time giving her flowers as well. But without further ado, here is my conversation with Xenia Matthews.

[musical interlude]

David Dylan Thomas: So welcome to the “White Meat” podcast. I’m your host David Dylan Thomas, and today we have Xenia Matthews. Xenia, tell the good folks here what it is you get up to.

Xenia Matthews: Hi, everybody. I’m Xenia. I’m a filmmaker. I love to make whatever I want.

That usually entails some type of narrative about Black women’s interiority, but shaken up in the blender of my mind, and it usually comes out a little bit strange, very sparkly, and a lot of fun. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: That– So the one film of yours I’ve seen is “Ourika,” and that describes “Ourika.” It is strange, it is sparkly, and it is a lot of fun.

Why don’t you tell folks a little bit about that movie?

Xenia Matthews: Yes. “Ourika” is a tale that came to me in my last semester of school. I graduated during COVID, and we we used to call it Zoom University ’cause everything was online. But I took an art history class in the last semester, and it was called Art in the Age of Revolution, and we studied the Haitian Revolution in tandem with the French Revolution and how they were happening concurrently.

And while the French Revolution was happening the French were still trying to cling to their colonies, Haiti being one of them. And there was so much art produced in this time that was just so much art, and then just so many practices that were dehumanizing of Black people and Black women in particular.

I think Black women’s bodies in that point in time was, it was a place where the colonial imagination could run free, like their desire to own humanity and humanness. When you look at the art from that time, it’s just grafted onto all those paintings. So I saw one of those paintings and it really struck me.

It was a picture of Ourika who was a Senegalese girl who was kidnapped from Senegal when she was very young, like two years old, and brought to France to be a pet for an aristocratic family, which was like a very common practice back then. And I saw one of those paintings, and it was a painting of her on her knees.

She’s in this sort of like praising position with her arms up, and she has a smile on her face. And directly next to her is the bust of the man who kidnapped her, who was like essentially like the master of that aristocratic family. And I’m like, “This is very eerie and weird.” And I’m like, “I feel like there’s a soul inside of this painting.”

And I just started to ideate. I’m like, “If anyone was going to free that soul or even, I guess, put the pieces together of the soul that had been fractured through all of those paintings, because there were so many paintings and sculptures and plays and poems, and white women in France would dress up as her.

It’s called Ourika-mania. It was like a phenomena in the metropolis of France in the mid-eigh- 19th century. So I just started to ideate. I’m like if someone could put the pieces of her soul back together and rebirth her, like how would it happen? And that idea mixed with my love for like ’70s, like weird obscure ’70s like B movies.

The one that I referenced a lot was “Flesh for Frankenstein,” which is als- You’ve seen it?

David Dylan Thomas: I have, and I never made the connection, but now that you’ve said it. ‘Cause I saw Ouri- I’ve seen “Ourika” twice now, and then shortly after that, just by happenstance, I watched “Flesh for Frankenstein,” which is one of those movies when you watch it, you’re like, “I must be the only person who’s ever seen this that I know,” ’cause this is so weird. But now I think I know what the rest of the podcast is gonna be about. But go ahead. You’re referencing “Flesh for Frankenstein.” We’ll get into it.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah. I just love the, I don’t know. I just love how strange it was. Like they took the Frankenstein story and they just like completely made it into whatever they wanted it to.

I was also thinking about Pygmalion’s myth or like Pygmalion’s statue. It’s like a, it’s like a Greek myth. I’m like, I need to brush up on it, but it’s like a Greek myth that Ourika… So there is a book called “Ourika,” that was written in the 1820s, I believe, by Claire de Duras. It’s it’s like a novelette, and it’s very racist, but it was lauded for a long time as being like the first book from the subjectivity of a Black woman.

But it’s very racist. Ourika is telling the story of her life from her deathbed, and the reason that she dies is because she hates her Blackness so much that she falls ill and dies, and she’s like telling this story like right before she dies.

David Dylan Thomas: Wow.

Xenia Matthews: And I’m like, this is the narrative that y’all praised for such a long time, just like in academia.

Like I, I was just reading about it. But anyway, in the book she references Pygmalion’s statue, which is like a Pygmalion was like an artist and he like built this statue and he wanted it to be like alive. And she was like, “I wanna be alive like that.” It’s a very like strange thing, like a human wanting to be animated.

I don’t know. But I was thinking about that a lot.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. It’s almost like a human looking at Pinocchio and being like, “I wish I could be as alive as Pinocchio.” You know what I mean? Like-

Xenia Matthews: Yes. There, there’s something there that like she’s referencing about control. Like the way that her life is.

Like she’s literally a pet. Like she’s a pet for an aristocratic family. So there’s a lack of control that she perceives like about her life, and she’s like wanting to be alive in a different way. That was a long answer.

David Dylan Thomas: No, and, it’s a useful background. And, tell me if I get too spoilery, but, like, when I first saw it, really in, in the very tagline or whatever, it’s like you have these two women Black scientists who are trying to bring someone or something back to life.

And and when I first saw it, I didn’t realize Ourika was a real person. This is based on a real person. The second time I knew that, I was like, “Okay,” it opened it up a lot, and I feel like I’m gonna go back and watch it again now knowing that there’s this “Flesh for Frankenstein” inspiration, ’cause that’s definitely coming through loud and clear.

But tell me, talk to me a little bit about the, the Afrofuturism of it all, because there is a dearth of films about Black women scientists. So thank you for that. But talk a little bit about that, that Afrofuturist aspect.

Xenia Matthews: Yes. I feel like I’m, I’ve always been, like, a student of history, and every single thing that I read about our history, I’m actually reading a book about Harriet Tubman right now from the lens of just alternative spirituality, like her as a conjurer, a conjurer and a root worker. And every time I read about our history, I’m like, “This is not the past.” This belongs somewhere beyond. So when I metabolize these things in my brain I feel like it just automatically comes out as I don’t even know if I would describe it as futurism because when I think of Ourika, I think of it as like a, a setting with no time.

Cause there’s so many references that are old. We using, we even eat we even use a lot of like old lenses.

Like we used like, those lenses were from the ’60s I think, and they were for Bolex cameras. We used some old lenses for like the the scene where she’s in her bedroom and she is like reliving her death scene or reliving her death.

And so I’m very much inspired by like the tactility of the past. So, but I think the magic that inspires us feels like futurism when it’s always been there for us. So when people see it on screen, they’re like, “Oh, this is the future.” And I’m like, I feel like this is Blackness throughout time.

The, the paradigm that has existed within us as long as we’ve been a people. But yes, I do I wanna ask a question. What do you think about about “Ourika” that’s like futurist for you?

David Dylan Thomas: So it’s mostly the scenes with the scientists ’cause even their look carries a little bit of that P-Funk kind of, Afrofuturist is the word that comes to mind.

But it is this very… And it’s interesting too, ’cause when I think about Afrofuturism, I do think about the ’70s version of it, which is this very like heady mix of we’re gonna bring in the Black Power movement, which was very much about natural hair and let’s bring back Africa, but this mixed with like vinyl and these sparkly very, futuristic looking shiny kind of materials.

So again, thinking of P-Funk, thinking of a lot of that work that, that’s how it came off to me, ’cause the colors are very vibrant. The colors are very- but it’s also got this almost like hazy, fuzzy look to it too that’s different from, there’s a couple scenes you have in a store that feel very grounded, very real, like this is like Philadelphia today or somewhere today.

That contrasts with. But it’s interesting what you say about the timelessness because both that, those lab scenes and the sort of interiority scenes of Ourika’s mind both feel like they are out of time. You know what I mean? Like they, they are not, I cannot say this is happening at this point, this is happening at that point.

But but as to what makes it feel futuristic when we’re in the lab, it is that very almost you know how each like age tells on itself when it tries to talk about the future? That’s like it feels like a ’70s-ish vision of, oh in the future scientists are gonna look like this, and they’re gonna have these labs, and the labs are gonna do this.

So I think that’s where I was getting it from.

Xenia Matthews: I like that you said P-Funk ’cause I feel like Parliament Funkadelic was one of my, like, when I was an illustrator, I would reference P-Funk all the time.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, really?

Xenia Matthews: Yes. I had an assignment in school to do a self-portrait. Like we had to do a portrait of ourselves as somebody else. So we had to draw ourselves as somebody else, and I chose to draw myself as George Clinton in combination with the “Cosmic Slop” album cover.

So I was the girl, I was simultaneously the girl on the front of the “Cosmic Slop” album cover with George Clinton’s hair. But so I just did a film and I’ve been referring to it as an Afro retrofuturist musical.

And I feel like “Ourika” is also an Afro retrofuturist film.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Xenia Matthews: Cause it, it deals so much with history. There’s even like the, the painting is the aesthetics of the mid-19th century. And like the the lab is very ’70s coded. One of my hair references for Ra-Nel, who’s like the brains of the operation I was like, “Give her a Jheri curl.”

And then and for Belinda, I wanted her to have like big Diana Ross hair.

I feel like Diana Ross is always in my movies in some, some way somehow.

David Dylan Thomas: How did you how did you discover Diana?

Xenia Matthews: I was very young. I feel like I’ve always been a the type to seek out history. So I was 10 when Michael Jackson died.

And I it was like the whole world stopped. I never saw an event like that before or since. And in my little brain, I’m like, “I must know everything about this person ’cause obviously there’s something special.” So I, yeah, I feel like low-key Michael Jackson was my portal into history, into Black history in general ’cause I would look at all of these things that were like happening concurrently, like with like the major milestones in his life and then like everything started making sense to me.

But through the research of Michael Jackson, that’s how I found out about Diana Ross. And like I feel like from the moment I saw her I was in love. I’m like, “There’s something about this that like speaks to me.” I was also a very colorful child. I feel like every time I look at my old photos I’m like, “Oh yeah, she was there the whole time.”

But I sang, every time I sang for an audition, ’cause I used to audition for a lot of plays when I was, like in elementary school and middle school, I would sing “Stop in the Name of Love.”

David Dylan Thomas: Nice.

Xenia Matthews: And they’re like, “Who is th- who is this child? Why is she singing something that’s 60 years old?

What’s happening?” But I don’t know. I’ve just always been inspired by her. There’s a softness about her. Now that I’m an adult, there’s a softness about her that I identify with ’cause I’m a pretty soft-spoken person, but, like, when I talk, people know that I know what I’m talking about.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Xenia Matthews: So I see myself in Diana Ross. I see myself in her loudness, her boldness. Her vision has always been very strong. Her look has always been very strong. I see her as a spiritual successor to Janet Jackson because she also is very soft-spoken, but also gets it done. I feel like especially in directing and filmmaking, I don’t think you see a lot of examples like that, where it’s like people think that directors are supposed to be, like, loud and in charge and make their presence known.

But the silence and the softness that Diana and Janet both have, I look to that. I’m like, “That’s how I naturally am, so I need to lean into that way of leading.” But I also just love sequins.

David Dylan Thomas: It’s funny too, you you mentioned Michael Jackson as your entree. He too was very soft-spoken.

But when he performed, he was anything but, right? Yeah. There’s nothing shy about the way that Diana performs, the way Janet Jackson performs. And I feel like, and again, I only have that, that one film to go on, but watching “Ourika,” I’m like, “This is not a shy movie. This is not a quiet…” It’s it is quiet in its way, but it is a, it is loud visually.

It is, like you are not going to see another movie like this today. You know what I mean?

Xenia Matthews: And I take a lot of pride in that.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Xenia Matthews: Every time someone tells me that they’ve never seen anything like this, or they tell me every single time that they watch it, it becomes something new for them.

I take a lot of pride in that. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: I wanna talk a little bit about your choices in the– not just the color of the scientists and that they’re women, but their age too. These are older, coded older Black women scientists. And again, it’s rare enough. I– So I do a, I, I do a lecture about the history of Black horror, and one of the first things I talk about is “Son of Ingagi,” which is a ’30s sequel to a highly racist movie but that was in fact produced, written and produced by a Black man A\and the main character in it is a Black woman scientist. Like- … the story revolves around her. And and as I, like, when I tell that story, I ask people, “Okay, so try to name as many movies as possible where the main character is a Black woman scientist.”

And it’s like “Hidden Figures?” We had to wait another 100 years before we got another one. So it is this glaring, loud, deafeningly loud by its silence gap in storytelling. So talk to me a little bit about yes, I want someone to bring  Ourika back, but deciding who’s gonna be the one to do that.

Talk a little about that choice.

Xenia Matthews: Yes. So one, I wanna shout out my mom because my mom is a Black woman scientist. And I feel like just knowing her, just watching her, just seeing how brilliant she is, I’m like, if anyone held the key to reanimation, it would be this kind of woman.

There is so much about her that is like she– I feel like she has a deep cosmic connection to the work that she does as well as like the know-how, and that’s how I split up the scientists.

Yes. So Belinda, the one who sees her in the store, who recognizes her soul is present in that store and grabs her to come take her home with her, she’s the one that’s holding that cosmic connection. Without her skills to identify like where that energy is, like the experiment could not happen.

And then Ra-Nel who has the sort of technical ability to make the experiment happen she’s the one who’s like keeping the logs and managing like checking how big the blob is. And doing the sort of like actual like scientific part of it. And I feel like both are needed for such an experiment.

You’re communing with this spirit that’s been fragmented in all these different places and trying to put it back together, and that’s not a light task. So yes, one thing is my mom. The second thing is I was also like really big into science in high school. I was gonna be a chemistry major when I was applying to schools.

Like my chemistry teacher in high school told me like I was one of the most talented students that she ever had.

David Dylan Thomas: Wow.

Xenia Matthews: But in my defiance, I was like, “Chemistry is really fun and I really like it, but it feels more like a hobby and like art feels like my calling.” Like that feels like where my life is taking me.

And I was 100% right. But that made a lot of people mad, especially like when we think of STEM as we think of STEM as a stable path. We think of it as the right choice. And a lot of people thought I was making the wrong choice. Especially when you’re gifted and you’re Black, people want you to excel.

But I was never going to not excel, so they didn’t have to worry about that, but they were worried. So I use a lot of my own love for science in my work.

And then I would say the third thing, I love old women. I love elders. My friends would make a joke about my films like Xenia film bingo card or a Xenia cinematic universe bingo card, and one of them is a old woman.

One of the squares is an old woman.

David Dylan Thomas: I love that your friends know you and your work well enough to do that. I love that, that that trope, that joke as like code for, “Look, we get you.” And you got a pattern. We all know it. No, so tell me about some of your other films.

Xenia Matthews: Yes. “Ourika” is probably the maybe like the fourth or fifth film that I did.

Not all of them I released. I think two before Ourika I released. One of them is called “Good Blood,” where it’s like a poetic documentary that I made right– almost right after, like a couple months after I had an abortion. It was in 2019, and I just wanted to document, like how I was feeling.

And I called it “Good Blood” ’cause I was like, “This is a good thing that I did. This is a good decision that I made.” And then blood because that was like the… That’s what happened. It’s a bloody thing, but at the end of it, I felt back to myself. I felt normal. I felt really proud that I could do this. I felt fortunate that I could do it. And I did it with my mom and I felt fortunate for that as well that she was there for me. It’s not the case for a lot of people.  So yeah, so I made that film, and a lot of that film visually is very bright, it’s very colorful. And I would say like it’s four minutes long, but maybe a minute and a half is this sequence of these sort of visual aberrations that resemble blood cells.

We follow this like self-insert of me, like while she’s in like a cemetery, and she lays these flowers down, and then my voice takes over, and then we just fade into this world of just color.

And I wanted it to resemble the movement of blood cells to just, I don’t know, make beautiful what people don’t often perceive as beautiful, and then also the I like to call it the [???] goings on at the microscopic level.

There’s something that says about humanity. Like interrogating a person at that level especially like a Black woman, a Black girl I think speaks to her humanity in a way that doesn’t always get showcased. I feel like Black women are flattened a lot in various types of media, and to interrogate her mind, her soul, and also her body-

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah

Xenia Matthews: Her imperfect body that inspires me a lot. So that was “Good Blood.” And then I also did a film called “Stroke,” which was also a poetic doc of my reflections around like, I was, I think I was walking, looking for the cemetery to shoot “Good Blood” in, and I just felt this strange feeling of a ghost.

And at that point, I had been thinking a lot about my dad. I had like just moved to Philly. My dad is from Philly, but I don’t really know that much about him. I know I have family here, but I don’t know who they are or where they’re at. And I was thinking about how I was feeling about my dad in this sort of like ghostly way.

And he had died from a stroke so I used the elements of a stroke to inspire like the cinematography of how the camera moves. So just I have this written down somewhere. But like what actually happens in a stroke.

I used that to inspire the cinematography. So like the movement the colors, the, the way that the images fade in and out from one another.

At a certain point in the film, things become very unclear, like clear and unclear at the same time. And then I wrote a poem about it. And yeah. So that’s also like really inspired by biology and the body and just yeah, like using that to inspire how I make the film. And then yeah, those are the two films that are listed on my website.

I have other films that I just never released properly. I’m trying to think. In 2025, I made a doc with a an artist. Her name is Jori Minaya, and her work, I feel like her work is like performance art and what is it? Like textiles. And she did a performance that revolved around the colonization of our bodies as African peoples, and then the colonization of plants and how different botanists cultivated these gardens.

And I’m also, the reason I accepted the project was that I was also looking at similar things for my project “Mama Baby,” which is my feature film that I am inshallah filming next, next year.

David Dylan Thomas: Congratulations.

Xenia Matthews: And yeah, it has to do a lot with land and the connection to our bodies, as well as very many other things.

There’s– My films are never about one thing.

David Dylan Thomas: Sure.

Xenia Matthews: They’re always about at least 12 things.

David Dylan Thomas: Is this your first feature?

Xenia Matthews: It will be, yes.

David Dylan Thomas: Congratulations. That’s awesome. What what inspired you?

Xenia Matthews: Lots of things, but for this one, mainly life. So I talked about “Good Blood” and being about the abortion that I had in 2019.

So I feel like “Good Blood” was the seed, and “Mama Baby” is the tree. So the thing that was left out of “Good Blood” is how present and how meaningful my mom’s presence was, like, during that process. And I was doing a Q&A for “Good Blood.” I think it was right after I got out of school. I was doing a Q&A for it, and I was talking about my mom, and the moderator was basically like, “It sounds like you left your mom out of the film.”

And I’m like [gasp]. ‘Cause I’m a mama’s girl. If there ever existed one, I am a mama’s girl. So I talk about her constantly, like I am right now. And I was talking about her and the moderator said that, and I was like, “Oh my God.” So in 2022, right before I got into Sundance, I started writing this film ’cause Steph told me, she was like, “You’re gonna go on this festival run and you need to have your next project on deck.”

And I will never not listen to Steph.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, we’re gonna give Steph her flowers in a moment, but that is exactly the same advice she’s given to me. It’s like, “Dave, have the next thing ready. Have the next thing ready. Have the next thing ready.”

Xenia Matthews: Yes. So I started writing “Mama Baby” in maybe I wanna say September or October 2022.

And it started as just the, I just started writing out and like fictionalizing, but not really, like my abortion, like just like the scene of the actual abortion. So like I had a pill abortion, and it was like the– You go to plan- when I had it. The laws changed like it feels every month.

But when I had it, like I went to the doctor, they gave me the first pill, and then they sent me home with a second set of pills, and then the rest of it happens at home. So I was like writing out that scene from the doctor to the house and describing like everything that’s like happening around it, like the torrential downpour that was happening like from, like the car was moving. That’s how windy and rainy it was. Like I remember just so many details about it. So I just started with those details. And I feel like the supernatural element like came in very early because in the first… I’m realizing I didn’t say like what’s it, what it’s like.

David Dylan Thomas: I was gonna let, yeah, give you the freedom to introduce us as, as you will.

But yeah, please give us the logline or whatever they call it.

Xenia Matthews: Yes. Okay. “Mama Baby” is a supernatural and heartwarming coming of age. I consider it a dual coming of age of Baby, who is in her early 20s, and Crystal, who is the mother character, who is in her mid-50s and that sort of element is inspired by my grandma and how she tells stories.

Every time she tells a story, she says, she starts the story with, “When I was growing up.” This could be a story about her 60s, it could be a story about her 40s. But every time she starts it with, “When I was growing up.”

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, wow. I love that

Xenia Matthews: Yeah. So I think about this constant phase, or not even phase, but just this constant idea of growing, like whatever age you’re at.

So it’s a dual coming of age about about a mother and a daughter as the daughter has her abortion and it’s about the aftermath of their abortion as well. There’s a spiritual element, there’s a supernatural element, ’cause why wouldn’t there be? But yeah. In the film, I’m using the abortion as a portal.

I was originally referring to this portal as the maternal blood mirage. And I wrote out what every part of that phrase meant. But in essence, it is this space that opens up when life and death occurs at the same time. And that is the abortion. I consider my abortion to be like a life-giving and a life-affirming event.

And I really wanted to interrogate that. I worked on a film called “Hollywood Does Abortion,” which just had its Tribeca premiere in June this year.

David Dylan Thomas: I’ve heard about this. Tell me more about this. Yeah.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah. So I don’t know if you’ve seen the film “Disclosure.” It was on Netflix, but it was about the just the history of representation of transness in different types of media, but mainly film and television. And “Hollywood Does Abortion” does the same thing for abortion. So it just explores how abortion has been represented in film and television and even some news media throughout the years, which is all connected especially with a sort of political issue like this.

David Dylan Thomas: Sure.

Xenia Matthews: It’s how we talk about it in real life is directly connected to how we talk about it in film, and it’s like a loop. So I did I did makeup and I did DIT on that film.

David Dylan Thomas: Excellent.

Xenia Matthews: Name somebody who could do both.

David Dylan Thomas: Xenia.

Xenia Matthews: But yeah, so I was, like, talking to the interview subjects, like, just in the makeup chair and I learned a lot.

And just also by watching the film, I helped them conduct some research, things like that. And then I also– I didn’t make, I didn’t make the cut. They were gonna interview me for a sort of “And this is what the future of movies that deal with abortion can look like.” But I didn’t have everything together in time for when they needed it.

But yeah, so that’s “Hollywood Does Abortion.” And through that film, I just learned how grave, like even in more positive representations of abortion it’s depicted as a sort of like life and death situation.

In order to have somebody who is a good person, like we perceive them as a good person, like as the audience, the filmmaker wants us to perceive them as a good person, they cannot have an abortion that is just, oh, it’s just something that they wanna do. Like it has to be explained by “Oh, they had an ectopic pregnancy and this abortion saved her life,” or whatever it is. But a woman, especially not a Black woman, cannot be perceived as a good person if she just wants to have an abortion just because she doesn’t wanna be pregnant or have a baby. So I started interrogating that. I feel like I started interrogating that just on its face in “Good Blood” ’cause I was like, “This is a good thing.” And I knew that was like something that people had never heard before. Like even when I was making this film while I was in school.

Like even when I would talk about it, my teacher would whisper about it. And I’d be like, “Why are we whispering?”

David Dylan Thomas: It’s, and there’s something even I had never heard of the grandmother, I guess in this case, but a mother of someone who’s getting an abortion being present for the abortion. Literally never heard of it, and then as soon as you said it, I’m like of course. Like, why wouldn’t that be the case?

But even that element is something that contributes to the normalizing narrative, the good narrative. I think all of those things just that on the face of it already changes the context in a way that like… ‘Cause I think, and I’m really looking forward to seeing this movie, but like my impression of how Hollywood deals with it is very much this, even in the best of cases, it’s something that, happens in a back alley.

Even if it isn’t actually happening in a back alley, it’s kinda happening in a back alley, right? And it’s something like, “Don’t tell anybody.”

Xenia Matthews: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: This is not, we’re not gonna re- This is not a celebration. This is not something to be celebrated. This is something to be whispered about, right?

This is something to be like- … “Let’s never talk about it again.” Like… and that, that, without even talking about why we need to whisper about it, that’s one element already that’s a little insidious.

Xenia Matthews: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: But casting it as this thing that has to be done alone or with a very close friend, certainly not with a family, right?

It was when in cinema you started to see parents who were accepting of their children’s queerness.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And it was like that was this shift that was like going away from the narrative of, “Okay, it’s o- it’s okay, quote-unquote, to be queer, but don’t expect your family to love you. Oh my God.”

Xenia Matthews: Yes. Yeah. And I feel like “Mama Baby” has a lot of heart, it has a lot of humor. There is the supernatural element that’s tugging our main character back home.

It’s about home, it’s about return, it’s about, I actually have… I’m sorry. I know we’re not doing video recordings of-

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, no. I’ll describe whatever you show me.

Xenia Matthews: But I did an interview last year. This is a cinema zine that’s produced out of New York, like one of my close friends.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, cool.

Xenia Matthews: And it’s huge.

David Dylan Thomas: That is awesome. Yeah. Folks, this is like a phone book. Oh, I say phone book. You don’t know what the hell a phone book is, an en- or an encyclopedia. No, it’s a big book, people.

It’s just a big book.

Xenia Matthews: It’s a big book. But I did an interview it was called “Mapping the Xenia Cinematic Universe.”

David Dylan Thomas: Oh my God. I need to get this article. That’s beautiful. So it’s this big, giant cover style, like article with this beautiful sort of green image with yellow eyes on it.

It’s great.

Xenia Matthews: Yes. And this was, like, the image that I made for, it’s like to represent the spirit in my film. But they published part of my director’s state- or all of my director’s statement, and I was reading it the other day and I’m like, not to gas myself, but I really wrote this. But I just wanna read the last sort of couple sentences of it. ‘Cause I feel like it encapsulates “Mama Baby” so well.

But it is Mama Baby features everything I’ve ever loved. It’s an autofictional, surreal memoir of sorts. Lush green-blue mise-en-scene with pops of red, summer romance, mind-bending lessons, higher truths, bugaboos with pretty smiles, Eurosapphic unrequited love, palm trees, serene rivers, the cr- the creatures that scutter between the rocks, being held, being held, being held.

Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: That’s awesome.

Xenia Matthews: That’s what Mama Baby is about.

David Dylan Thomas: That– So you’d mentioned that it’s also about land. Can you tell me m- a little more about that? ‘Cause my next project is also about land, so I’m curious what your take is.

Xenia Matthews: Yes. The way that the abortion happened, so I originally happen- I originally had it happen as I had my abortion which was a pill abortion.

But in the film, through years and years of crafting this story, I settled on having it be an herbal abortion.

There’s a plant that is native to Florida. Oh, and the film also takes place maybe 60, 70% in Florida, in my hometown, Melbourne Beach, Florida. Shout out Melbourne Beach.

But the character, she’s living in Philly, and she returns back to Florida, and that’s where she finds out that she’s pregnant. And she has this initial sadness and panic. And her older sister, her older half-sister, who’s estranged from the family is the one who settles her down and takes her to this sacred space.

And this sacred space is what used to be their dad’s house. Their dad is dead, but it was a space of I feel like a lot of I feel like a lot of kids of divorce feel this way, but like being at mom’s house, living at mom’s house, incredible, lovely. Going to dad’s house every other weekend, get me outta here.

So it was like one of those that sort of like family dynamic, which is also the family dynamic that I grew up in. I was raised by my mom and lived with my grandparents as well. And then when I would go over to my dad’s, I would be like, standard of living over here is not great. But so the character Anaya, she inherited their dad’s house when he died, and she kept a garden in the backyard.

The main character, Baby, is a very talented grower. She’s been growing things since she was very little, and one of the first things that she grew or tended to was this shrub in the backyard. And she originally perceived it as a hibiscus shrub ’cause they’re everywhere in Florida ’cause the flowers look very similar.

But what it actually is a cotton plant.

And, the, the genus phylum whatever name is gossyp- gossypium something. I have to look back at it. But it is a cotton plant that was actually banned in Florida to grow in 1925 because of a boll weevil infestation.

But that very same plant is the plant that enslaved women used to use. They used to use the root of it to make teas to induce miscarriages or abortion. To not, basically to not give birth to more slaves.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, it’s an act of resistance at that point.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah. Baby and Anaya go to this backyard and Baby is very touched that Anaya has still been taking care of this plant.

“Oh, this is the first plant I ever take, took care of, and like this is how we originally bonded.” And Anaya’s like “I know for your whole life you thought this was a hibiscus plant, but it’s actually a cotton plant.” And from that plant, that’s what they make the teas out of to help administer Baby’s abortion.

So there’s all the elements of like going back home.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Xenia Matthews: Baby has been tending to this land since she was a baby, and she didn’t actually know what she was doing, but she felt that connection to it. One of the phrases that I like to use for this film is we own this land by way of footstep. ‘Cause my ancestors have been on that land for at least three generations, probably more. That’s just what I know of.

But like that’s our ancestral land. So I think about the fact that this sort of like her ownership of her body is not only her birthright, but is, the land speaks that into her as well

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: That sounds, this all sounds amazing and best of luck with it. I wanna close out by giving Steph her flowers because she is our common link. I saw, the first time I saw “Eureka,” it was by way of almost auditioning Stephanie ’cause I was looking for a producer for “White Meat,” and she sent me basically her reel, which is the the stuff she’s producing.

One of the things she produced was “Eureka,” and it just it blew me away. Tell me about your experience. Just brag on Stephanie for a minute here.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah. So Stephanie Malson is one of my favorite people that I have ever met in this life. She is so smart. She is so intuitive. The lessons that I learned from her on “Ourika” I take everywhere I go.

Yeah, she’s just such a people-oriented person. I feel like in a way she knows that when we’re working, the art comes first, but the art is the people.

David Dylan Thomas: Yes.

Xenia Matthews: There is no art without the workers. She is constantly like just, she always prioritizes care, so like however that manifests. And I think a lot of producing is about care, like especially in the world that we wanna live in.

The world that we wanna build as filmmakers, especially as Black filmmakers a less exploitative world, a working ecosystem that isn’t entirely based on money because we know as Black filmmakers that the money is never gonna, we’re never gonna have a cash influx like, ’cause yeah, a lot of the stuff that we’re making, they don’t want to be made and they don’t wanna be seen. But in the absence of money, we have each other, we have care. And I feel like Stephanie Malson, the GOAT, is a living, breathing example of what that world could be.

And just I’ve written down a lot of what she says, and a lot of it has really inspired me, so I love her dearly. And our birthdays are also a week apart, so-

David Dylan Thomas: Really? Oh, cool.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah. Kindred spirits.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, I I had a similar experience, and I like what you said about the vibe on set, the care, ’cause that was the best compliment I got as a director was having several people on the cast and crew tell me this was one of the best sets they’d ever worked on.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And like that to me it could’ve been the best movie ever made, but if people had a terrible time making it and never wanted to talk to each other again, like I would consider that a failure.

Xenia Matthews: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And if the movie was crap but we all had a good time and learned something, that is not wasted time in my opinion. Fortunately, we got both, the good, the, the good for both of those. But but no, but I credit Stephanie in large part for that good vibe on set ’cause as we were making it, as we were prepping, she’s like, “We gotta do this. We gotta do that. This is why,” bah, bah, bah, bah. Like she considered one of her top priorities, one of her p- as part of her job is to make sure that the, we had a good vibe on set, and she succeeded. And there’s been a 10 million other ways she was awesome, but that was one of the key ones.

And so yeah, I think you’re absolutely right about how she connected the care to the art to the people. Like that’s all one thing. You can’t have one without the other.

Xenia Matthews: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: So thank you, Stephanie.

Xenia Matthews: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: Thank you so much for joining me. Where can people keep up with you and all the wonderful things you do?

Xenia Matthews: Yes. So my main channel of communication is my Instagram. My personal Instagram, which is where I post all my art anyway, is @glassdick, G-L-A-S-S-D-I-C-K. And my movie Instagram for “Mama Baby” is called mamababymovie. That’s M-A-M-A-B-A-B-Y-M-O-V-I-E. And then I also have a website where you can check out all of my work.

I have all of my links there. You can see what I’ve worked on, my bio, all of that good stuff. And that is called Muxeeum. It’s a pun on my name. But it’s spelled M-U-X-E-E-U-M, Muxeeum. And that’s where I house all of my art. That is my public record for everything that I’ve done. Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, well congratulations and good luck on your first feature. Cannot wait to see it, and thanks for being on the podcast.

Xenia Matthews: Thank you so much, Dave.

David Dylan Thomas: And for “The White Meat Podcast,” this is David Dylan Thomas, and we will see you next time.