“I don't personally believe you can extricate environmental issues from reproductive issues because if a mother is drinking polluted water, what is that going to do to her system? What is that going to do to the system of the baby that she's housing? If she lives in an area where he can see noxious fumes being pumped into the air because of a nearby refinery, what is that going to do to her respiratory system? … If she lives in a food desert, what is that going to do to her strength? All of these things matter.” — Zora Schiltz Rouse

While working as a journalist and editor, Morgan Jerkins noticed a trend: stories and personal essays about the ethics of having a baby in a world marked by rising temperatures and other indicators of climate change. But these stories, she noticed, were always written by white women. “I thought to myself, ‘well they're not the most susceptible to violence, or erasure or lack of care. If anyone should be writing a lot of these stories, it should be black and brown women.’”

That recognition was the genesis of “Black Madonna.” In this inspiring conversation, Jerkins and her co-director Zora Schiltz Rouse discuss how they collaborated in order to bring Aziza’s story to life.

Follow Black Madonna on Instagram:
@black_madonna_bloom  |  @_morganjerkins  |  @zoritapepita 

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

Morgan Jerkins and Zora Schiltz Rouse are young filmmakers working at the thematic intersection of environmental and reproductive justice.

Morgan is a New York Times bestselling author and National Magazine Award-winning journalist. Zora is a producer and director who most recently worked on a Ryan Murphy show for FX.

We'll be back with their full interview on April 3 — think of it as a post-film Q&A.

In the meantime, follow them on IG: @_morganjerkins, @zoritapepita

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

More than a decade ago, Tyomi Morgan noticed no prominent Black women were talking about sexual health. “Instead of complaining about it, I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to enter into this space.” The sexologist and designer of The Cowgirl Workout sits down with Asha Dahya to discuss how our bodies are hardwired for pleasure, the way cultural B.S. interferes with that reality, and how we can reconnect. 

“This is part of our humanness. Our sexuality, no matter what it looks like, is a part of our experience. And we get to talk about this … out loud and in the open with medically correct terms.” — Tyomi Morgan

• youtube.com/@GLAMerotica101
• Instagram: @realglamazontyomi
• thecowgirlworkout.com | thepleasureacademy.com
• Periodical Volume 24

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

“Labor + Justice” is such a tonally wild and imaginative film, we were fascinated to hear a behind-the-scenes conversation about of how it came together. For example, director Sarah Joy Byington researched real-life stories of women charged with crimes after experiencing miscarriages or stillbirths. Their stories inspired her dystopian narrative. On this month’s Periodical Podcast, the director speaks with Asha Dahya about making a shocking-yet-sensitive film. She also shares how motherhood helped shift her own views on abortion and reproductive justice. Ultimately, “Labor + Justice” reflects her own growing understanding of this complex topic, including how it intersects with race, homelessness, and substance abuse. 

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

In this moving conversation, Asha Dahya speaks with writer/director Jahmil Eady about how her own birth story inspired the screenplay for “The Bond.” When Eady was born, her mother was incarcerated. She was shackled during labor, a practice that continues in many U.S. states today. During Eady’s teen years, her mother and other activists successfully advocated for anti-shackling legislation in New York state. Both her mother’s story and Eady’s extensive research informed the short film. 

"This film is meant to be a tool not just for talking about anti-shackling and the issues of giving birth behind bars, but it is also a way for people who have shame and and feel stigma to find one another ... It's a tool for connection. The reality is, in a country where millions of people are impacted by the carceral system, there's so many of us out there." — Jahmil Eady

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Welcome to this special rePROFilm mini podcast episode, as part of our ‘Films for Thought’ partnership with WISP - a company that specializes in female-focused online reproduction and sexual health treatment. We’ve partnered with WISP to present a repro health movie night on college campuses across the US. At RePROFilm we believe in conversation and filmmaking as a vehicle for sparking change, and I’m so excited to be presenting these interviews with some brilliant filmmakers.

Sindha Agha is  the director of ‘Birth Control Your Own Adventure' and is a stop-motion short film featuring Icelandic sheep, clumsy endives and an OB-GYN who talks with the voice of a robot. Sindha uses these creative tools to chronicle her struggle with the side effects of birth control medication, where she was often forced to choose between depression and physical pain.

Sindha is a BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated director & writer working in film & TV. "Birth Control Your Own Adventure" was distributed by THE NEW YORK TIMES. This was Sindha’s first film, which also went viral with 12.5 million organic views and was nominated for a 2019 News & Documentary Emmy. Ya know, no big deal! Most recently, Sindha wrote & directed the BAFTA-winning comedy series “How to Be a Person”, shown on CHANNEL 4 in the UK. Her work as a writer, producer and director has been seen on Netflix, BBC, The New Yorker, Vox, The Atlantic, MTV and more.

- Watch Birth Control Your Own Adventure for free: reprofilm.org/wisp-films-for-thought
- Learn more about WISP: hellowisp.com
- Sign up for rePROFilm's Periodical: reprofilm.org

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

Welcome to this special rePROFilm mini podcast episode, as part of our ‘Films for Thought’ partnership with WISP - a company that specializes in female-focused online reproduction and sexual health treatment. We’ve partnered with WISP to present a repro health movie night on college campuses across the US. At RePROFilm we believe in conversation and filmmaking as a vehicle for sparking change, and I’m so excited to be presenting these interviews with some brilliant filmmakers.

Aurora Brachman & Jessie Zinn directed the brilliant short film ‘The Gallery that Destroys All Shame’. The film documents a group of women who gather one night in Los Angeles to hear from two sex educators, Pamela and Mychal, who teach the women how to overcome shame and stigma around their bodies, and in particular their vulvas, in a workshop titled ‘Take Back the Speculum’.

Aurora Brachman is an award-winning documentary director and cinematographer. Her films explore narratives of intimate relationships within families and communities. Aurora primarily makes work about the experiences of Black, brown, and Queer people and is committed to collaborative and ethical storytelling.

Jessie Zinn is an award-winning director from Cape Town, South Africa. Her work often stems from ideas surrounding girlhood, and coming-of-age stories.

- Watch The Gallery that Destroys All Shame for free: https://www.reprofilm.org/wisp-films-for-thought
- Learn more about WISP: https://hellowisp.com
- Sign up for rePROFilm's Periodical: https://reprofilm.org

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

I know I’m a badass. I do a lot of good things. But I can’t change the mindset of a racist, 50-year-old white cardiologist. What I can do is teach Black women how to care for themselves and to demand the care they deserve (from their doctors).” — Ricki Fairley 

Ricki Fairley survived an aggressive form of breast cancer. Then she turned her attention to advocating for other Black women, who are 41% more likely to die from the disease than their white counterparts. She founded Touch, the Black Breast Cancer Alliance, to address the inequities she discovered in cancer treatment and research, including the relative lack of Black women who participated in clinical trials. Over the past year Touch has registered almost 14,000 Black women in clinical trials — in other words, this woman means business. In this episode of the Periodical Podcast, Fairley speaks with host Asha Dahya about her personal story and how she continues to disrupt the landscape of cancer treatment. 

• TouchBBCA.org
• BlackDoctor.org / Facebook.com/BlackDoctor.org
• For The Love of My Gurls
• Breastie Love

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

The “work wives” behind the dark comedy “Always & Forever” join Asha Dahya on the Periodical Podcast to chat about collaboration, going viral, and how humor is a secret weapon in the fight for reproductive justice. 

“It's just a proven concept at this point that comedy disrupts the status quo. A little bit of humor, a little bit of entertainment moves the needle. It works.” — Lara Everly

“Humor sneaks past people's defenses. It can be a way (in), even for people who agree but might feel like other serious videos feel medicinal … You get them laughing, you get them engaged, and then you come in with the punch at the end.” — Jessica Stamen

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

On this month’s episode of the Periodical Podcast, Asha Dahya speaks with the “Long Line of Ladies” co-directors about “a different kind of filmmaking” driven by listening, collaboration, and representation — the non-performative kind.  

After making the Oscar-winning short “Period. End of Sentence.,” Zehtabchi wanted to tell a stigma-free story about periods. That led her to researching tribal traditions and ultimately partnering with Tome, an indigenous filmmaker who skipped her own coming-of-age ceremony. To make their film, they established “complete and utter trust” — with each other, but also with the Allens, the Karuk family at the center of the film. 

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

The “Who Gets to Parent?” creators join Asha Dahya on the rePROFilm Periodical Podcast to discuss their parenthood story and how they combined storytelling and research to create their documentary series. They also discuss the life-changing power of community building, the blessing of a family ally, and what it’s like to be queer parents who live in Kansas. A truly moving and inspiring conversation — one of our favorites. 

“We started pouring so much more love into each other and patience into each other because we realized how alone we were on this journey.” — Pere DeRoy

• For our Vol. 17 Periodical, we’re sharing Episode 2, “Why IVF?,” and Episode 4, “IVF Check #1/Racism and Physicians.”
• WhoGetsToParent.com

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

The idea for “Simone” came to writer-director Aisha Amin after countless hours on public transit observing parents and other caretakers struggling with young children. For our Vol. 16 Periodical Podcast, Asha Dahya speaks with Amin about how she developed the title character in collaboration with actress Cree McClellan, a single mother herself. 

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

Periodical Podcast host Asha Dahya chats with “Counterfeit Kunkoo” writer/director Reema Maya Sengupta about how her mother’s struggle to find housing as a single woman inspired her to write a “very angry script.” In a lovely full-circle moment, Reema’s mom served as the producer of the film and helped secure many of the set locations in the Mumbai slum where she grew up. 

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

Welcome to our March episode of the rePROFilm podcast. It’s Women’s History Month, and it’s also Oscars month, and we are SO excited to speak with two Academy Award-nominated filmmakers in this episode! 

Our theme this month is virginity - the conversations we have about it, the cultural taboos, the societal expectations, the ridiculous gender expectations, and why, when it comes to sexuality and youth, focusing on healthy communication rather than shame or fear-based messaging, is perhaps a better way forward. 

And what a better and more effective way to share messaging, than in film. In this month’s rePRO Periodical we are highlighting a short film called ‘My Year of Dicks’, which is an Academy Award contender for Best Short Animated Film, written and created by Pamela Ribon and directed by Sara Gunnarsdóttir. 

It’s based on Pamela’s 2014 memoir, “Notes to Boys (and Other Things I Shouldn’t Share in Public)” which documents her resolution to lose her virginity as a 15-year-old in 1991 while growing up on the outskirts of Houston. The film is broken down into 5 chapters and five different awkward sexual encounters, with some kinda douchey guys. Style-wise, it’s giving me 90’s MTV vibes - with a moody, grunge soundtrack, a mixture of real film footage of a teenage Pamela, and some bold yet sensitive animation from Sara. 

Now if you aren’t familiar with the names Pamela Ribon and Sara Gunnarsdóttir, you definitely know their work. Pamela is a writer, best known for her work on Disney’s Moana and Ralph Breaks the Internet. She’s a best-selling novelist, and co-host of the podcast Listen To Sassy, a weekly deep-dive through every issue of Sassy Magazine. 

Sara is a director and artist from Iceland who has created animation, music videos, and original artwork for film and television, including Marielle Heller’s debut feature “The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” and HBO’s Emmy-nominated “The Case Against Adnan Sayed.” She is one of 3 Icelandic artists nominated in various categories at the Academy Awards this year, and in keeping with Women’s History Month, Sara is the first Icelandic female director to be nominated for an Oscar! 

We hope you will enjoy this conversation filled with sexual innuendos, lots of giggles, and a powerful conversation about how we dismantle harmful ideas around virginity. Take a listen to our interview! 

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REHEARSAL with special guest Courtney Hope Thérond

The “Rehearsal” writer/director talks to Asha Dahya on the Periodical Podcast about how her own on-set experiences inspired her short film. Maybe if she could demonstrate how intimacy scenes can go awry, she thought, others might understand how problems can arise even between people who trust, care for, and respect each other. Tune in to find out how audiences reacted.

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

With special guests “Miso” director Kelly Walker, writer/director/producer Mariah Bess, and actor/producer Alex Sgambati

Asha Dahya speaks with three women behind “Miso,” a short film about a doula-assisted, at-home abortion. The trio talk about how they want “Miso” to be an entrance point for audiences to learn about abortion doulas, abortion pills, and Plan C, the organization that gives people the information they need to safely end their own pregnancies at home. They also chat about combining advocacy and narrative, creating their ideal on-set experience, and their Oscar campaign.

“I knew that I wanted to tell a story about relationships and how people come together through these embodied processes … I wanted to show how a person moves through this moment in their life and how they connect with another person in real time.” — Mariah Bess

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Our featured short film this month has got us thinking about family support systems, awkward parental conversations, and how repro rights and health care is actually inextricably linked to all of that.

The short film we’re excited to present in December is called La Macana, directed and written by Maria Mealla. The film follows recently divorced Carmen and Franco who work through their fervent relationship to support their daughter Sol when she gets her period for the first time. Just reading that sentence aloud immediately gives me flashbacks to when I first got my period, and oof it was rough. My parents are so loving and supportive, but the taboos around menstruation and anything “female” related were so tangible, my dad would literally change the channel whenever one of those ads came on TV where you’d see blue liquid being poured onto a pad or a tampon. You know exactly which ones are talking about.

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Asha Dahya speaks with Kevin Shane who is the Marketing & Communications Director for an organization called the Male Contraceptive Initiative. He is leading the organization’s advocacy and outreach efforts. This organization is doing some incredibly brilliant and frankly revolutionary things in the contraceptive space for men, or sperm producers, which is the term Kevin will explain more about in the interview. 

Before we get into the episode, think about how birth control completely shifted our lives as women as well as the world economically and revolutionized the power dynamics egg producers have in their families. Of course there is a dark history of racism toward black and Brown women when it comes to early testing of birth control, as well as major pharmaceutical coverups of certain birth control methods becoming dangerous and harmful to women, and this is something we as a country need to acknowledge and rectify with transparency going forward. 

Now if we start to see multiple methods of contraceptives hitting the market in the next few years for men, how will our families and society at large be revolutionized once more, and how will it impact our pursuit for gender equality? To answer all these questions and more, we are thrilled to introduce you to Kevin Shane from the Male Contraceptive Initiative. 

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Asha Dahya speaks with “Sweet Potatoes” director Rommel Villa about how he worked with Miramontes’ children to tell his improbable story of invention and resistance.

Please do yourself a favor and RUN, don’t walk, to watch ‘Sweet Potatoes’ during the month of November by heading to reprofilm.org. If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. 

Be sure to follow @RommelVB on Instagram and Twitter, and see more of his work at his website rommelvillafilms.com

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

Asha Dahya chats with Julia VanRooyen, an OB/GYN and sex educator. In this informative conversation, Dr. Julia breaks down the science and policy surrounding sex education in the U.S. 

“We hear again and again and again that giving kids information about sex is going to give them license to have it. That has been studied extensively, and it really is not true.  Studies have shown that abstinence-only sex education does not lower teen pregnancy or birth rates and in fact likely increases it.” — Julia VanRooyen

Mentioned resources: siecus.org, guttmacher.org, and sexeducationcollaborative.org

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In this episode, Asha Dahya interviews Katia Badalian - a multi-talented Russian-American visual artist who directed the short film we’re featuring this month titled ‘Heroines’. 

Ten year-old nina is at the home of her neighbor Regina, Waiting for her mother to pick her up. Regina is a coarse-talking woman, dressed in a sexy outfit while chain-smoking in her kitchen, and perhaps emboldened by Nina’s unresponsiveness, takes the opportunity to give Nina the good old’ sex talk - well her version of it! At first, given Nina’s silence as she listens, we assume as the audience that she doesn’t comprehend some of the details Regina is describing. But a twist at the end makes the viewer see, in a shocking way, that she understands more than we realize. 

‘Heroines’ has just wrapped up a successful 2 year festival run, where it received a lot of peer recognition and acclaim, as Katia shares in our chat. 

Shot in only 2 locations over 8 minutes, relying on sound design and carefully designed visuals to be a key part of the story, ‘Heroines’ is a very different type of sex education film, but one that underscores the need for more dialog to disrupt damaging narratives we are seeing around America today. 

This was such a rich, dynamic and inspiring conversation, and we're thrilled to be sharing it with you all! 

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Vol. 8 of the rePRO Periodical Podcast features an interview with “Marcy Learns Something New” director Julia Kennelly.

“(The film) is something you can relate to, even if you are younger, if you feel kind of behind in your journey with sexuality or you feel like there was this expectation that you would know everything about yourself and everything about what you wanted out of sex when actually the culture didn’t ever provide that for you.”
— Julia Kennelly

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PLACENTA PÂTÉ 
Tia Salisbury in conversation with Asha Dahya

This month we wanted to switch gears a little and bring some joy and humor to the table. Our feature short film is called ‘Placenta Pâté’, and if you haven’t seen it yet, head to reprofilm.org to watch right after this chat because as you’ll hear, there are some really fascinating insights into the background of this film that will make you appreciate all the hard work, research and passion that goes into making even a short film. 

Our guest today is Tia Salisbury - a multi-award winning writer and director based in the UK. Her live-action shorts have been screened at BAFTA qualifying festivals including 'The London Short Film Festival'. Although COVID was a tumultuous time for the film industry and for parents, for Tia, who is also a mum, it ended up being a rather productive and successful time in her career. She made a comedy short film which won 2 awards, and wrote a comedy series pilot. 

Tia's latest comedy short, 'Placenta Pâté', focuses on new parenting in all its messy chaos, as experienced through the eyes of clashing same-sex mums Libby and Erin, played by Bethan Nash and Georgia Frost. New mother Libby has breastfeeding woes, but when her wife suggests a traditional placenta remedy as the answer, underlying tensions rear their head, and it's not just the kitchen getting messy.

Join Asha Dahya as she speaks with Tia about all things placenta, motherhood, filmmaking, and how sometimes the best way to get your project funded is to annoy the crap out of funders until they give you the money and tell you to, “piss off”. 

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

Bonus Episode: Why WE’RE Here

Get to know us a little better in this bonus podcast episode: A few members of the rePRO team got together to talk about why we do this work. Hear from co-founders Lela Meadow-Conner and Mallory Martin, podcast host Asha Dahya, programmer Neha Aziz, and copywriter Emily Christensen.   (Recorded prior to June 24, 2022.)

“We're all from all across the country. We're from all different walks of life and different lived experiences, different ages … (we’re in) different parts of our lives. And I think that it’s so important that rePRO never is a singular vision. It is all of us..” — Lela Meadow-Conner

reprofilm.org

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If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!

Andrea Raby and Marie Khan in conversation with Asha Dahya

In this bracing conversation, “Undue Burdens” director/producer Andrea Raby and Marie Khan, director of operations for Midwest Access Coalition break down what each of us can do to preserve abortion access and why wearing Handmaid costumes and wielding wire hangers isn’t helpful. 

“We have …  abortion pills. We have practical support funds. We have abortion funds. We have mutual aid organizations. We have radical harm reduction spaces.” — Marie Khan on the structures that are in place now that people didn’t have access to 50+ years ago.

Andrea Raby is a Chicago-based documentary filmmaker and producer whose films have played in festivals across the U.S. Her latest short film “Strikers” is supported by IF/Then Shorts. She was a fellow of the 2019 Double Exposure Film Festival with her short film “Undue Burdens.” Her producing credits include podcast “Love is Not” and short documentary “A Galaxy Sits in the Cracks.” She is currently a co-producer on director Ruth Leitman’s in-progress documentary “No One Asked You.”

Marie J Khan (she/her) came on board with Midwest Access Coalition (MAC) in 2016, a practical support organization assisting and funding abortion seekers traveling for care. As the director of programs, she works closely with partner clinics and hospitals, and is a hotline coordinator providing comprehensive logistical planning, booking, and funding for travel/lodging/childcare/food for MAC clients.  Marie grew up in Southern Wisconsin, in a conservative Christian space. Once she was able to access more reproductive resources and broaden her worldview, she realized she had much to learn. Connecting with her own South Asian community has been critical in her ongoing process of understanding herself. She’s worked exclusively at bars, nonprofits, and public universities, and is thankful for the radical and fearless thinkers who have helped her survive and thrive.

Support the Show.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to our monthly newsletter where you will get each episode of the pod straight to your inbox. Learn more at reprofilm.org or at @reprofilm The rePROFilm Podcast is executive produced by mamafilm. Looking forward to bringing you our next conversation!