Meet Matisha Baldwin: The Filmmaker Who Built Her Own Train

Matisha Baldwin: The Filmmaker Who Built Her Own Train

“I didn’t know what I didn’t know, until I didn’t know it.”

That sentence makes far more sense after you’ve made an independent film. Five years, a pandemic, a lawsuit, the loss of hard drives and backups in the Los Angeles fires, and one temporarily lost movie later, Matisha Baldwin has learned a great deal about independent filmmaking.

On November 3, 2026, “The Los Angeles Bakers” arrives on digital platforms. Matisha wrote the film, co-directed it, produced it and stars as JoJo Baker, a woman who thought she was done with her husband. Her husband disagreed.

Getting JoJo and Will Baker through their unfinished marital business was one story. Getting the movie itself from an idea to an audience became another.

You Are the Train

Matisha didn’t enter filmmaking through a single door. She was already a working actress, singer, dancer, educator, and writer. For years, those disciplines may have seemed like separate paths in a career that resisted fitting neatly into one box.

Making her first feature film changed the way she saw herself. She wasn’t juggling separate careers. She was, and is, a creative entrepreneur.

“Dance taught me movement. Music taught me rhythm. Acting taught me perspective and how to listen. Teaching taught me communication. Writing taught me structure. Producing taught me problem-solving. Directing forced me to use all of it at once.”

Turns out, she was going to need all of it.

“When you’re independent, there is no studio train. You are the train.”

Matisha compares a major studio production to a train whose carriages each serve a distinct purpose. A conductor, department heads, and support teams keep it moving, backed by established business systems, professional relationships, marketing resources, and distribution connections.

Independent filmmakers, however, work with a very different set of resources.

“It’s like being on the Orient Express with the staff of a commuter train. The destination hasn’t changed. The expectation of what you’re supposed to deliver hasn’t necessarily changed. But the number of people available to help you get there certainly has.”

Depending on the budget, Matisha says, you may be the head of multiple departments while another producer serves as the entire staff.

That is what she means when she says, “You are the train.”

Yes, a Shirt

When asked what that kind of resourcefulness can look like in practice, Matisha remembers a problem that began with something very small: a shirt.

Midway through production, after a location change, someone realized that the lead actor’s shirt was missing. In everyday life, that would be an annoyance. In a film, it is a continuity problem, and continuity does not care if an independent production has limited time and money.

Matisha had about ten minutes. Fortunately, the producer had access to the writer. Even better, they were both Matisha.

She rewrote portions of the scene to justify why the character was suddenly shirtless without changing the integrity of the scene or giving either actor too much new material to memorize.

But changing one thing meant changing almost everything around it.

Matisha and her co-director, Terrah Bennett Smith, had to adjust how the scene would be shot. That meant a new setup for camera, lighting, set design and props. A wardrobe problem had worked its way through nearly everyone involved in creating the scene.

And it worked.

“Independent filmmaking is basically one long magic trick. The magic is in everything that went into creating a scene or a moment that nobody watching will ever know about except the people who were there.”

When the Problems Get Bigger

Of course, not every problem could be solved in ten minutes.

By the time “The Los Angeles Bakers” was nearing the end of its long road to completion, Matisha had already navigated circumstances she never anticipated when she wrote the film.

Then came the Los Angeles Fires.

Hard drives and their backups were lost. The finished movie Matisha had spent years bringing to life was suddenly believed to be gone.

There was no rewrite for this one. Matisha had to figure out how to regroup and process the loss.  A few months later, Matisha received a text from her conform editor, whose home was destroyed in the fires, saying that he was able to save his hard drives and her project was salvageable.

With the help of her post-production team, they were able to rebuild the missing pieces.

But finishing the movie still wasn’t the finish line.

The Part After “The End”

Matisha thought making her own movie would be the easy part. Then she discovered a completely different education waiting on the other side of the finished film.

Distribution became the steepest learning curve.

She now had to master a new side of the business: finding a distributor, negotiating a deal, understanding deliverables, and learning what happens between finishing a movie and placing it before an audience.

She took a distribution class, spoke with fellow filmmakers who self-distributed their films, and carefully explored her options. Ultimately, “The Los Angeles Bakers” found a distribution home with One Tree Entertainment.

The experience gave Matisha invaluable information she intends to carry into her next project: distribution doesn’t simply happen at the end of the filmmaking process. Understanding it from the start can, and should, inform choices made as early as the development stage.

That was one of the things she didn’t know.

Now she does.

Owning It

One thing Matisha did know before she shot “The Los Angeles Bakers” was that she wanted to own it.

For her, that choice is rooted in a much larger history. Black performers, especially Black women, have spent generations fighting for opportunities to enter rooms that were not always open to them. When access itself is a struggle, ownership becomes an entirely different conversation.

“We had to get on before we could even think about ownership. But getting on and owning are two very different things.”

Owning the asset creates something that can remain after the job is over.

There are financial rights, licensing and potential revenue. But for Matisha, there is also creative power: greater influence over what gets made, how stories are told, who gets hired and the depth with which people of color exist onscreen.

“It’s when we own that we have the opportunity to financially rise. And when we financially rise, we have greater freedom to creatively rise.”

That freedom is part of what Ladywood Entertainment represents for Matisha: not simply waiting to be invited into someone else’s story but having the ability to create and own her own.

The Things You Can’t Know Until You Know Them

After everything she knows now, surely Matisha would go back and give the woman who started this movie a warning.

Absolutely not.

“Honestly? I wouldn’t say anything at all.”

Had she known what was waiting for her, she might never have started. She might have waited for everything to be “just right.” And “just right” has a funny way of never arriving.

Some things have to be learned by doing them. Some things have to go wrong. Some things apparently require a missing shirt. And some lessons arrive through circumstances no filmmaker would ever choose.

“But now that I know what I know, I will certainly make another movie. And there will be more things I won’t know, until I know them.”

The destination taught her things the starting point couldn’t.

Leaving the Room Better

For all that “The Los Angeles Bakers” taught Matisha about filmmaking, business and ownership, none of those things are how she ultimately defines legacy.

That story started long before this movie.

At 19, while performing in Dreamgirls, Matisha was surrounded by artists who represented, to her, the height of Black excellence. On the first day of rehearsal, they arrived exceptionally prepared, nearly off-book, and worked at an extraordinary level. They also understood the significance of being Black artists leading a production at a theater that had not typically presented shows centered on people of color.

Matisha wasn’t new to performing, but being in that particular room affected her.

There was a support and understanding among the cast that she never forgot. They cheered her on during her scenes just as she cheered them on during theirs. They made her feel confident. They made her feel seen.

She carried that with her.

As an educator and mentor, she has tried to create that same sense of work ethic and support for other people. As a filmmaker, she now has the opportunity to help create the kinds of rooms she once walked into.

And while Matisha wants the work she leaves behind to be great and timeless, she hopes her greatest impact will be measured differently.

“I pray that my legacy is reflected in the people who’ve had interactions with me that left a lasting, positive impact, sparking change and inspiration in their lives.”

On November 3, 2026, “The Los Angeles Bakers” finally reaches its audience. But for Matisha, that is one destination, not the destination.

“If I can leave rooms better than how I entered them, that’s a legacy I can get down with.”

The train is ready for its next ride.

All aboard!

You can Follow Matisha Baldwin’s social media at:

IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1952515/