About

Acquamarina Productions was founded in 1997 by video artist Paola Marino. Born in Bologna, Italy, Paola studied Film and Semiotics at the University of Bologna, graduating summa cum laude in 1995 under the mentorship of renowned philosopher and writer Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum).

In 1996, she moved to Toronto, Canada, where she began her career as a video producer. A turning point came in 2007, when she discovered a passion for opera—an art form she had previously overlooked. Since then, Paola has been blending film and opera, creating video works inspired by iconic arias. Her award-winning pieces Cherubino, Carmen, Irene, and Dalila have been featured at international festivals worldwide.

In 2012, Paola received an Ontario Arts Council grant to produce a documentary on Italian-Canadian photographer Vincenzo Pietropaolo. That same year, she was nominated for the 2013 K.M. Hunter Artist Awards, recognized among the top eight film and video artists in Ontario.

Her collaborations with Indigenous artists have been especially meaningful. With Eddy Robinson, she co-produced Kinoomaage-Asin / Teaching Rock (2013), which premiered at the Toronto imagineNATIVE Film Festival and later screened at the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum’s Native FilmFest. In 2017, she partnered with Theola Ross to create Twilight Dancers, a CBC-funded short documentary that premiered at the Catalina Film Festival and went on to screen at ImagineNATIVE, Cinequest, and the Athens International Film Festival.

Paola has also explored contemporary themes, including directing Open Shadow: The Story of Teal Swan (2017), now streaming on Gaia TV. She is currently completing a documentary on the life—and afterlife—of Erik Medhus, a young man from Houston who passed away in 2009 at the age of 20.​