HEROINES with Katia Badalian

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

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. 

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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. 

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

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. 

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!