Paisley Smith

Paisley Smith is a Canadian filmmaker and virtual reality creator based in Los Angeles, California and Vancouver, British Columbia. Smith is the director of Unceded Territories, a "fun, weird, and totally gorgeous" (ScreenAnarchy) collaboration with First Nations artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, that explores the connection between climate change and colonization by pitting a destructive "Super Predator" versus the environment. Unceded Territories had it's World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival Immersive 2019, and was made with support from Creative B.C. and the Sundance Institute and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
Smith is also the director of Homestay (National Film Board of Canada, Jam3) an interactive VR documentary that deals with cultural understanding and loss. Homestay has screened internationally at IDFA DocLab, Expanded Realities at the Open City Doc Fest (London), Reel Asian International Film Festival (Toronto), and the Vancouver International Film Festival's Immersed 2018, where it won the BC Spotlight Audience Award.
Homestay is the recipient of "Best XR for Change" at Games for Change festival 2019.
Paisley is a visiting artist at the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division's Mobile & Environmental Media Lab, led by Scott Fisher. She is an admin of the thriving Women in VR/AR Facebook group. She Smith holds an MFA from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, which she attended on a Fulbright scholarship. She received her Bachelor of Arts Honours in Film and Media Studies and Art History from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.