Carolyn Combs’ work as an independent director-producer is known for being rigorously visual and extremely sensitive to character and performance.
She has worked on both narrative features and shorts, as well as on docs and in more experimental forms. A graduate of the Canadian Film Centre’s Director Residency Program, she has been an active member of Main Film and Videograph (Montreal), Video Pool (Winnipeg), and Cineworks (Vancouver). She served as the Executive Director of Women in Film and Television Vancouver 2012 until 2020.
Carolyn is also the director and co-writer of the feature film, Bella Ciao!, nominated for the Borsos Prize at the Whistler Film Festival.
In 2006, she directed and co-produced the feature drama, Acts of Imagination, completed with the assistance of Telefilm Canada and BC Film. It received its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and was subsequently invited to numerous international festivals, theatrically released in Canada, and broadcast nationally on Super Channel.
Small Currents, released in January 2011, was produced with the assistance of the BC Arts Council, the NFB and the CTV/WIDC Director Development Award, and is distributed by Ouat Media and was nominated for a Leo Award for Best Short Film.
Prior to her feature she wrote, directed and produced several documentaries targeted for the non-theatrical educational marketplace including the four part series, Art and Ability (2005), supported by CIFVF and the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies, distributed by Kinetic Video in Toronto. Her more experimental work includes Kut: Shock and Awe (2007), which she produced in collaboration with Craning Neck Theatre Productions, presented at the Waterfront Theatre in Vancouver and the Festival of World Theatre in Puget Sound, Washington.
An alumna of the WIDC Career Advancement Module, Carolyn holds a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Manitoba and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre from Concordia University. She has taught Acting and Directing for Film in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.