Bio
Paola Marino was born in Bologna (Italy) and would eventually study Film and Semiotics at the University of Bologna where she graduated summa cum laude in 1995 in Film Theory (among her professors, the eminent philosopher, linguist, and critic Umberto Eco, author of bestsellers such as "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum"). In 1996 she moved to Toronto, Canada, where she started her career as a video producer. Beginning in 2007, she discovered her passion for Opera, an art form that she had almost totally ignored until that point. Since then, she has been experimenting with the combination of film and opera through video artworks inspired by multiple arias.
Her award-winning video artworks Cherubino, Carmen, Irene, and Dalila were officially selected in multiple international festivals. In 2012 she was the recipient of an Ontario Arts Council grant for the production of a documentary on Italian-Canadian social documentary photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo. In the same year she was nominated for the 2013 K.M. Hunter Artist Awards, among 8 artists from the Province of Ontario in the film and video category. Her recent interest in exploring North American aboriginal dance and music led her to collaborate with native aboriginal artist Eddy Robinson directing and co-producing the short "Kinoomaage-Asin/Teaching Rock", which premiered at the Toronto imagineNative Film and Media Arts Festival 2013 and screened at The Agua Caliente Cultural Museum’s 13th Annual Native Film Fest 2014.