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Sunday, July 13, 2025

Meet Maya Cozier: T&T's top filmmaker

by

Caroline Moses
2498 days ago
20180911

Caroline Moses

Some of you might know the name Maya Co­zi­er from her days as a dancer, some may rec­og­nize the name from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val, while oth­ers might re­mem­ber her stint on­stage com­pet­ing for Miss World Trinidad and To­ba­go 2018. In any case, what­ev­er ca­pac­i­ty you know Maya in, you know she’s not a name to be for­got­ten. And if by some chance you haven’t heard the name Maya Co­zi­er be­fore to­day, then pre­pare to fall in love with her charm, beau­ty, and of course, raw tal­ent – just like we did.

Raised by two artists, Christo­pher Co­zi­er and Ire­nee Shaw, in the back of St. Ann’s, it was al­most nat­ur­al that Maya be­came an artist her­self. As an arts stu­dent at Holy Name Con­vent, she won an Open Schol­ar­ship for Vi­su­al Arts in 2012, and planned to pur­sue a de­gree in Fine Arts at Par­sons School of De­sign in New York. But at the last minute, she re­al­ized that Par­sons didn’t have a film pro­gram, and she de­cid­ed to ap­ply to the School of Vi­su­al Arts.

“I knew I want­ed to go to art school, I just didn’t know which medi­um I’d fit in­to.” she added. “I got a schol­ar­ship to Par­sons, and when I re­al­ized they didn’t have a film pro­gram, I made this very whim­si­cal de­ci­sion, which I tend to do, and en­rolled at SVA for film.”

It cer­tain­ly wasn’t a move that was an­tic­i­pat­ed by Maya – in fact, she nev­er stud­ied film be­fore mak­ing the jump, in­stead fo­cus­ing on the tra­di­tion­al medi­ums like paint­ing, draw­ing and sculp­ture-work. But Maya says star­ring in Nic­ki Mi­naj’s mu­sic video for ‘Pound the Alarm’ in Ju­ly 2012 was the rea­son for the switch.

“I was in Nic­ki Mi­naj’s video, and they brought in a crew from the States, and I think that was the first time I saw an in­ter­na­tion­al film crew,” she ex­plained. “I was on the street, right be­hind Nic­ki in my car­ni­val cos­tume, and I was very fas­ci­nat­ed by what they were do­ing, and re­al­ized then it was some­thing that I was re­al­ly cu­ri­ous about.”

They say cu­rios­i­ty killed the cat, but in Maya’s case, it cre­at­ed a new life: it birthed Maya Co­zi­er, the film­mak­er. But much like a new­born, Maya was en­ter­ing the vi­su­al arts world – a com­pet­i­tive one at that – with lit­tle to no ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I was start­ing from scratch,” Maya said. “A lot of stu­dents in those pro­grams had done film be­fore, in high school, but the on­ly back­ground I’d had was paint­ing.”

De­ter­mined as ever to prove her worth and make her mark, she set out to cre­ate her first film – and met up with her best friend Shan who was tour­ing with the Uni­ver­soul cir­cus. She took a bus to Philadel­phia and shot her us­ing her (non-pro­fes­sion­al) cam­era, and the rest, as they say, is his­to­ry.

“It got in­to the T&T Film Fes­ti­val, so that was kind of like my first film,” she added. “And from there, I just kept mak­ing films.”

But for Maya, it al­most felt nat­ur­al. De­spite not hav­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence in the medi­um, she felt like the art of film­mak­ing drew on all of her dif­fer­ent strengths – be in in fine arts, mod­el­ling or danc­ing. It al­lowed her to cre­ate her own ver­sion of sto­ry­telling, and her cul­ture and back­ground on­ly helped. For Maya, she was ready to tell her sto­ry – and be­ing a woman is a mas­sive part of that.

“For women, there’s this cul­ture that you should be in front of the cam­era, and I felt it even when I was in film school,” she said, ex­plain­ing that she’d some­times be one of the on­ly women in some of her class­es; film tends to be a male-dom­i­nat­ed field. “I think gen­er­al­ly women have a lot of sto­ries to tell, and we have a very strong per­spec­tive. I’d like to see a push for more women to take on po­si­tions be­hind the cam­era, in­stead of just for them to be in front of it.”

As not on­ly a woman, but a woman of colour, and of Caribbean her­itage, Maya felt more com­pelled than ever to share her sto­ries, and from there, her film­mak­ing ca­reer re­al­ly be­gan.

When I re­fer to Maya as a film­mak­er, I al­most feel like I’m do­ing her a dis­ser­vice. She is much more than the hands be­hind a cam­era. She’s the brains. She’s the cre­ator of the path. She’s the au­thor of the plot. Maya is not just a film­mak­er, or a di­rec­tor, or a pro­duc­er. Maya is a sto­ry­teller. And like many oth­er sto­ry­tellers be­fore her, she felt the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pay homage to her home: the Caribbean.

And it was miss­ing the Caribbean that re­al­ly paved the way for Maya’s first di­rec­to­r­i­al de­but: a short fea­ture film called Short Drop. Af­ter stay­ing for a sum­mer in New York by her­self, and miss­ing home par­tic­u­lar­ly more than ever, she chan­neled her iso­la­tion in­to cre­ativ­i­ty, spend­ing the time writ­ing the script that would turn in­to the short film. It was for her se­nior the­sis, her fi­nal ‘test’ to pass be­fore grad­u­at­ing in­to the re­al world as an artist, and nat­u­ral­ly, the char­ac­ters that be­gan to take shape had sim­i­lar­i­ties to peo­ple she’d meet at home.

“I was just pulling from a lot of my ex­pe­ri­ences grow­ing up, and I start­ed to think about home, and I missed it, so a lot of the char­ac­ters are very sim­i­lar to peo­ple in my life or that I’m very close to,” she ex­plained, of the process of writ­ing Short Drop. “I do feel that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to tell Caribbean sto­ries, but it doesn’t feel like a bur­den. Be­cause the sto­ries that I do want to tell, the sto­ries that I’m close to, they’re here.”

But al­though writ­ing Short Drop felt re­al­ly nat­ur­al, it wouldn’t trans­fer on­to film­– READ THE REST ON XXTHEMAG.COM


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