Drawn from a cache of personal video recordings from the past 22 years, director Steve Loveridge’s Sundance award winning MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. is a startlingly personal profile of the critically acclaimed artist, chronicling her remarkable journey from refugee immigrant to pop star.
She began as Matangi. Daughter of the founder of Sri Lanka’s armed Tamil resistance, she hid from the government in the face of a vicious and bloody civil war. When her family fled to the UK, she became Maya, a precocious and creative immigrant teenager in London. Finally, the world met her as M.I.A. when she emerged on the global stage, having created a mashup, cut-and-paste identity that pulled from every corner of her journey along the way; a sonic sketchbook that blended Tamil politics, art school punk, hip-hop beats and the unwavering, ultra-confident voice of a burgeoning multicultural youth.
Never one to compromise on her vision, Maya kept her camera rolling throughout. MATANGI / MAYA / M.I.A. provides unparalleled, intimate access to the artist in her battles with the music industry and mainstream media as her success and fame explodes, becoming one of the most recognizable, outspoken and provocative voices in music today.
Iyabo Kwayana is a transnational cinematographer and independent filmmaker of narrative and documentary film who has a keen interest in themes evocative and reflective of spirituality and metaphysics within everyday life. As a transnational filmmaker, exiled from her native Guyana, South America due to family politics at an early age, she is drawn to liminal spaces and transient states of being and consciousness. These themes are very present in her work.
Iyabo is the recipient of the Fulbright Hays fellowship in Tanzania, the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship for Brazilian Portuguese language, and the Loreen Arbus Women in Film award in cinematography. She is a BAFTA shortlisted filmmaker and her current film Practice recently begun its festival run screening at Camden International Film Festival, AFIdocs, and Visions du Réel, amongst other festivals. Other works of which she is a key collaborator have screened at domestically and internationally at over 30 festivals including: Lorcano International FilmFestival, Festival Dei Popoli, and True|False.