Genesis

Natural Hair The Movie began as an idea in 2013 presented by Ashanti Titus to the Grind Over Matter team of producers. At the time, Grind Over Matter premiered its first film It’s Complicated  at the Angelika theater in Dallas. Check out the movie here.

 Reginald Titus Jr., the director and team began shooting concept footage for Natural Hair The Movie at the Naturally Isis event on September 7th, 2013 in Dallas TX. Check images below.

After shooting footage, the team decided not to move forward and began shooting a short film called Wrong Girl using the Red Scarlet X. After Wrapping up “Wrong Girl” Reginald had a vision on how to approach Natural Hair The Movie.

“I looked at a few case studies, like Indie Game The Movie that provided practical approaches to conquering Production and distribution” Reginald said. “At the time I was shooting a lot of short stories for a local church in Dallas that gave me the confidence to telling this particular story” said Reginald.

Principal photography for Natural Hair The Movie began in November of 2015.

Check out the BLOG for updates.

A Journey to Natural Hair 

From the age of 5 to 12 my twin sisters and I went to the beauty salon to get our hair pressed two Saturdays a month. It was very time consuming for our mom to do all of our hair. She had to get upevery morning to be at my job at by 6:30 am. Everything changed for me at the age of 12. My family moved to Texas that summer. This meant a new school, new friends, a new town, and a new hairstylist. My mom took my sisters and I to a hair stylist in a neighboring city. This is wherewe met the dreaded RELAXER. My mom approached the stylist and told her that she wanted all of us to have a press and curl style. The stylist explained that Texas summers were too HOT. She did not want to heat up the entire salon with a hot comb oven. She did tell us that she had the perfectway to achieve the same straight look. “Let’s just give them all a relaxer.” So, from the age of 12 to 22 I started to get a relaxer every 8 weeks. 

That was until the age of 22. After my first child I started noticing that my hair was not retaining length. My hair was shedding and it did not look healthy. I started to research healthy hair, and I then found out that the relaxer could be the biggest culprit. In October of 2009, I got my last and final relaxer. I was so frustrated because my hair was shorter than it had ever been and it did not look right. I began my journey after 24 hours of natural hair videos and 7 months of new growth. I decided to do the big chop. Then I realized that the journey had just begun. 

Now, I had to figure out how to care for my natural hair, how to style my natural hair, and how to be proud of my hair. Most of the older women that I came in contact with saw natural hair as nappy and unpolished. I did not realize how this effected the way that I saw black hair as a whole.  As I sought out more information and guidance, I realized that I was not alone on this natural hair journey. My husband's support was monumental in my decision to go natural. He wanted to make sure that I was achieving the goals that I wanted while being healthy. In his mind natural hair was the way to go. My experiences and the love and support that I received inspired my idea for natural hair for a movie, a documentary film that explores the journeys of many women who may have been on a different path, but ended up on the same destination, natural hair.

Ashanti Titus                                                                                                                                           Executive Producer
Ashanti@grindovermattertv.com