Magee McIlvaine was born in Canada and grew up between East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia) and Washington, DC. While attending high school in DC, Magee won the Raiser Fellowship to produce a political documentary about the kingdom of Swaziland in Southern Africa. At the age of 16, he successfully gained access to the political elite, the opposition party, and even the King of Swaziland. This experience propelled him down a path of political and cultural exploration throughout the world with film as his medium. His work to date primarily focuses on the intersection of politics and the arts, especially the use of hip hop music and culture as a political tool. From Africa to Europe to South America, he has produced documentaries in some of the world’s most notorious urban areas. As co-director of the groundbreaking ‘Democracy in…’ series (Senegal, France, Haiti), as well as two political documentaries in Venezuela, he conducts guerrilla filmmaking workshops around the world; and, his work has been presented at institutions of higher learning in the US and abroad (Harvard, MIT, GWU, Georgetown, Wesleyan, University of Cape Town, among others), and at music and academic conferences (SXSW, NXNE, CMJ, ASA, Waga Hip Hop Festival in Burkina Faso, and more).