Maria-Saroja Ponnambalam Ponnambalam

Saroja (No Cable Productions) is an Ontario-based filmmaker and community arts educator with Venezuelan and Tamil-Indian roots. She is well-versed in critical geography, participatory media and documentary. Her independent arts practice involves working with a variety of media within the spectrum of documentary – animation, photographs, home video, and interviews. Pandi, her first feature film, is an intimate moving diary that explores the mysteries behind her uncle’ life and sudden death via his personal archives. Her work has been supported by Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council and the National Film Board of Canada. She has been an integral part of the National Film Board’s Emmy-winning HIGHRISE project. In 2015, she was awarded with the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Media Arts. Saroja has worked in programming, research and workshop facilitation with various arts institutions and non-profit organizations including the NFB, Regent Park Film Festival, The Metcalf Foundation, Workman Arts, Toronto School of Arts, Hot Docs Youth Camp, the Commons Studio and has sat on juries for the Ontario Arts Council. She holds a Master of Arts in Human Geography from University of Toronto, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Production from York University.