Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.

Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.
Directed by	Steve Loveridge
Produced by	Steve Loveridge Lori Cheatle Andrew Goldman Paul Mezey
Starring	M.I.A.
Edited by	Marina Katz Gabriel Rhodes
Music by	Dhani Harrison Paul Hicks
Release date	21 January 2018 (2018-01-21) (Sundance)
Running time	97 minutes
Countries	United Kingdom United States Sri Lanka
Languages	English, Tamil

Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. is a 2018 biographical documentary film about Sri Lankan/British rapper and artist M.I.A.. Directed by Steve Loveridge, the film follows 22 years in the rapper's life, her rise to fame and her perspective on the controversies sparked over her music, public appearances and political activism.

The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, appeared at three other festivals, and will be released in theatres in the U.K. and the U.S. in September 2018.

Plot

• Early life bio
  • Her father
  • Phipps Bridge housing estate
• Visits to Sri Lanka
• Tamil activism
• Super Bowl incident
• New York Times magazine incident

Production

The film was in production as early as 2011 by Steven Loveridge, who was a long-term friend of Maya Arulpragasam (stage name M.I.A.). She gave him tapes and footage from her personal collection to build the film.

In July 2013, Loveridge released a teaser video on YouTube and his personal Tumblr page, responding to his dissatisfaction with Interscope Records and legal and funding delays associated with the project. The video was pulled from YouTube after a copyright claim was made by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, on behalf of Interscope and Roc Nation, the label representing M.I.A. Loveridge quit the project, stating he would "rather die" than work on it any further. In November, Loveridge rejoined the project and the UK non-profit documentary support organization BRITDOC Foundation announced funding.

The score was made by Dhani Harrison and Paul Hicks. The music supervisor was Tracy McKnight, and the film features samples of the M.I.A. tracks "Born Free", "Paper Planes", "Bad Girls" and "Borders".

Release

The film premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival on 21 January 2018. The Special Jury Award for the film's category, World Cinema Documentary, was awarded to Loveridge and M.I.A.

It appeared at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February 2018, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2018, and Sydney Film Festival in June 2018, where it was selected for the official competition. On 1 May, M.I.A. reported that she was blocked from boarding a flight to Toronto, Canada, from London for the Hot Docs Festival, after immigration officials identified a stamp in her passport. Festival spokespeople said in a statement that M.I.A.'s representatives were working with authorities to resolve the situation. Later, M.I.A. flew to the U.S. and travelled to Canada successfully by land from Buffalo, New York, and attended the festival.

On 20 June 2018, M.I.A. announced that the film would be theatrically released in the U.K. on 21 September, in the U.S. on 28 September, and with dates of other countries to be announced.

Reception

After the film's premiere, Loveridge said that his intention with the film was to give background and context to Maya (M.I.A.) as a person, in the current time period where 'media moves so fast'. He had disagreed with media coverage of her being presented as a 'controversial pop star' without an audience understanding her origins. He tried to centre the film more on the backstory of Maya, her upbringing, migration to the U.K. and the relationship between her father, his political activism and the civil conflict in Sri Lanka in 2010. This was distinct to the expectations that M.I.A. had for the project, which is that it would become a 'tour documentary'.

M.I.A. had not seen the film prior to the premiere, suggesting at a interview at the Sundance Film Festival that Loveridge had been absent for the last 4 years, communicating with her sporadically. Loveridge responded and said during the same time period he had "been drowned in MIA and her story and like my all day every day for the last four years". She remarked to Andreas Hale (Billboard): "[Loveridge] took all the shows where I look good and tossed it in the bin. Eventually, if you squash all the music together from the film, it makes for about four minutes. I didn’t know that my music wouldn’t really be a part of this. I find that to be a little hard, because that is my life." She later remarked that she felt Loveridge had "boiled the film down to an essence of what people already know about me" but that she "could still make 20 other films and not crossover with what Steve has made". Loveridge responded in defense of M.I.A.'s editing criticism and said both that his film "wasn't about music", and that it was necessary to keep distance between himself and the artist.

The film's critical reception praised its candid portrayal of M.I.A, but gaved mixed opinion on the storytelling threads presented by Loveridge using archival material. Spencer Kornhaber (The Atlantic) wrote that the film is a "fantastic and kinetic fulfillment of Maya Arulpragasam's desire, back then, to be heard as more than an entertainer". Charlie Phillips (The Guardian) criticised that M.I.A. received no directorial credit, given that from her own footage is where the film "sources its greatest energy". However, the visual quality of the footage used concerned other critics, with Simran Hans (Sight & Sound) suggesting that the "blurry and shakily shot [...] images suffer when blown up to the cinema screen". Hans commented that he only found fault with Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. for lacking exploration of M.I.A.'s musical process, style or production, atypical of biographical documentaries in the music genre. Being a biography, Sam Mac (Slant Magazine) remarked that Loveridge's approach to editorial portrayal of the artist was 'empathetic, admiring but critical', but noted that he had eluded some details in the retelling of events, like that M.I.A. "crossed a line" by tweeting a journalist's phone number in response to the negative press story published by The New York Times.

Awards

Award	Category	Nominee	Recipient
2018 Sundance Film Festival	World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award	Steve Loveridge; M.I.A.	Won

External links

• https://www.miadocumentary.co.uk/ – official website for the film
• Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. at IMDb