Queen Latifah in 2008 (credit: Affiliate Summit on Flickr, CC 2.0)

Minority directors are underrepresented in film at a degree of three to one, while women are underrepresented at a rate of seven to one, according to UCLA’s 2018 Hollywood Diversity Report. There is clearly room for progress here in terms of equality, especially for women who are black or of another minority identity. Rapper, singer, actress, label president, author, real estate developer and entrepreneur Queen Latifah is out to shift the scales; she recently teamed up with Tribeca Studios and Marc Pritchard, Procter and Gamble’s chief brand officer, to launch the Queen Collective (TQC). TQC has a goal of “accelerating gender and racial equality behind the camera.” Two inaugural documentaries backed by TQC premiered in April 2019 at the Tribeca Film Festival, and they are now streaming on HULU.

The Queen Collective’s First Films

“I would be remiss if I did not reach back and help black women get where I am today,” Latifah told The Root. In conjunction with the TV and film production company Latifah co-launched in 1995, Flavor Unit, TQC provided two black women with financing, production support, mentorship and distribution opportunities for their content. The first films are Ballet After Dark, directed by B. Monét, and If There Is Light, directed by Haley Elizabeth Anderson.

Ballet After Dark tells the story of a woman who survives a traumatic experience and goes on to help others do the same through therapeutic dance. If There Is Light chronicles a teenager’s experience as her mother works to move their family out of the shelter system.

“We are often painted as victims and never seen as victors, and I wanted my piece to change that narrative,” Monét said of Ballet After Dark. Jakena Blackmon, the mother in If There Is Light, said, “You never know who you might touch with your story.”

“When you watch these two films, you will be moved to action,” Latifah said. “I felt emotionally moved, inspired, and I felt grateful to have the permission to look into someone else’s life through their films and to appreciate someone else’s position, and it motivated me to want to do more.” At the film festival, she shared she is already starting to see the ripple or “halo” effect of QTC, in the women who now approach her to learn more about directing. And she hopes diverse female directors will practice more equitable hiring throughout the industry, saying, “My hope is that we create more female directors that end up giving jobs to more diverse crews and get their foot in the door and start to get recognized and hired for their work.”

Queen Latifah’s Philanthropy

Queen Latifah has been breaking ground for black women in entertainment for decades, from her first album, All Hail to the Queen, which sold more than a million copies in 1989, to the single “U.N.I.T.Y” that earned her first Grammy in 1995, to Jungle Fever, to Living Single, to Beauty Shop, to Bessie, to Girls Trip, to Star and beyond. She also supports creative pursuits through her philanthropy, by backing groups like the Save The Music Foundation and Jazz House Kids.

Women, girls, youth and teens are some of her main foci, and she has funded the Foundation For the Advancement of Women Now (FFAWN); Girl Up; the Common Ground Foundation, which serves urban youth; School on Wheels; and the Starlight Children’s Foundation, which works to “improve the life and health of kids and families around the world.”

LGBTQ groups for youth and adults, and AIDS/HIV and other health initiatives have also benefited from her giving, including The Trevor Project for gay and questioning teenagers and 46664, Nelson Mandela’s campaign to help raise Global AIDS/HIV awareness. Her donations range from several thousand dollars to more than $100,000.

Latifah credits her mother as a key source of inspiration and support. Sadly, her mother died in 2018 from a heart condition. Latifah is a spokesperson for the American Heart Association.

Childhood cancer is another cause Latifah supports; in 2018, she joined Carnival Cruise Lines in raising funds for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The project and celebration included a grand display of the children’s art and Latifah participating in a lip sync battle with Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl champion Jake Elliott. This initiative raised $100,000 for St. Jude’s.

Along with Latifah’s Queen Collective, a few other groups that support black women and women of color in film and entertainment include the Black Women Film Network, African-American Women in Cinema, Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network (WEEN), and the New York Women in Film & Television’s Immigrant Stories program.

Latifah on the Power of Black Wealth

While passionate about supporting black talent in entertainment, Latifah also believes in the financial power and sway of communities of color in the U.S.

“[We] have a lot of buying power, and we don’t have to do business with companies that don’t support people of color,” Latifah said while discussing TQC.

The UCLA report provides evidence of her point within the film industry: minorities accounted for the majority of ticket sales for five of the top 10 films in 2016. It also states, based on data such as ratings, ticket sales and social media engagement, “Consistent with the findings of earlier reports in this series, new evidence from 2015-16 suggests that America’s increasingly diverse audiences prefer diverse film and television content.” This finding aligns with the fact that the U.S. will soon become a majority-minority nation.

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