SOUND & VISION You might not know it, but Melina Matsoukas is probably your favourite music video director right now. By Eviana Hartman. Photographed by Stella Berkofsky
David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry: Before they were alpha auteurs, they directed music videos. And right now, no music-video director appears better positioned to follow in their footsteps than Melina Matsoukas. Her name may be relatively obscure, but her work is anything but: There’s the retro-kitsch masterpiece for Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction,” Lady Gaga’s megahit “Just Dance,” Katy Perry’s retro-romantic “Thinking of You,” eight videos for Beyoncé, and five for Rihanna. With a knack for turning out high impact imagery on a low budget, a documentarian’s eye for human detail, and a killer sense of humour, Matsoukas creates the kind of videos that go viral—at a moment when viral is vital. Matsoukas’s directorial signature is not one visual style, but rather her ability to spin a compelling, cinematic story. And her own story, it turns out, is as inspiring as one of her videos. She was born in the Bronx to a Greek-Jewish father and a Jamaican-Cuban mother, a potent cultural mix that she credits for her eclectic sensibility. As a kid in New Jersey, she was mesmerized by hip-hop and her father’s amateur photography. She paid her dues the old-fashioned way: She went to New York University for film, interned and PA’d on film shoots on the side, and promptly headed west for a master’s degree at American Film Institute in Los Angeles—“the hardest two years of my life,” she says. She found the music-video format liberating and made one for her thesis project. “I was like, This can be my way to reach the world,” she says. “To change the world, and have something to say.” Doing that didn’t take long. In 2006, having directed just two hip-hop videos as a professional, she scored a meeting with Jay-Z. He referred her to Beyoncé and the two “just clicked.” As we discuss ’90s pop icons and the merits of heels versus wedges over tamales at an outdoor café across the street from her new loft in downtown Los Angeles, it quickly becomes clear why so many pop divas are repeat customers: Matsoukas may be focused and driven, but she’s also the kind of girl—sharp-witted, doesn’t take herself too seriously—you can hang with. Like many of her professional forebears, Matsoukas has ruffled her share of PC-police feathers. No Doubt’s recent “Looking Hot” video was pulled after Gwen Stefani’s Na-