ABOUT

Filmmaker | Recording Artist | Writer

 

Ray Martenstyn is a New Zealand Sri Lankan multi-hyphenate artist operating across three distinct disciplines: cinema, hip-hop, and literature.

 

CINEMA

Beginning his filmic work at age eight, Martenstyn built an early foundation in independent filmmaking that earned international recognition at WorldFest-Houston and global festival circuits. He has since commanded every phase of the cinematic pipeline as a director, writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, animator, and visual effects supervisor. His technical and creative credits include work on major studio properties, including Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, alongside auteur-driven independent feature projects such as Re-Entry and Train to Kandy.

 

 

HIP-HOP (MC SOUTHPAW)

Performing under the moniker MC Southpaw, Martenstyn is a seasoned lyricist, producer, and cultural architect of Dutch Burgher descent. Informed by an international upbringing and built over more than two decades within the culture, his work operates as a vital node for the global diaspora, channeling themes of structural resilience, identity, and personal adversity into an uncompromising message of universal solidarity.

 

Grounded in a commitment to human unity and social justice, MC Southpaw explicitly rejects racial division, positioning humanity as a singular collective. He honors hip-hop in its truest form, a monumental Afro-Latino movement of localized resistance that has evolved over five decades into a global force for truth and self-determination. Continuing that lineage, his output reinforces hip-hop not as commercial content, but as a battle-tested vehicle for systemic empowerment, shared growth, and global solidarity.

 

 

LITERATURE

As a writer, Martenstyn works fluidly across screenplays, long-form music lyricism, cultural commentary, and extended literary manuscripts.