Biography

Joan Prowse is a documentary filmmaker, television producer and digital media content creator. She co-founded the Toronto based production company CineFocus Canada to tell thought-provoking, Canadian stories, worldwide and to deliver them on accessible and emerging platforms. With sales to broadcasters around the world, CineFocus programs are seen on A&E, TLC, PBS, and Oxygen in the United States, on Discovery and many other networks in Europe and Asia, and in Canada on Bell Media, CBC, Global, Radio-Canada, Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Bravo!, TVO, SCN, and the Knowledge Network.

As a company director and producer, Joan is involved in all aspects of the development, production and distribution of more than 25 hours of prime-time arts, biography and social issue documentaries and television series. She's successfully pre-licensed or sold this original programming to Canadian networks across the country and to international broadcasters on all four continents. Additionally, she has produced 75 + videos for health, environment, labour, indigenous and multicultural groups and organizations.

The pilot for Joan's environmental series, Green Heroes, was a nominee at the Banff World Media Festival and won DOC IT's pitch competition. It went on to be produced as a multi-platform series of 12 TV half hours, 45 webisodes and a mobile app in association with TVO and the Bell Fund. Green Heroes aired for nine years on TVO.

As a writer, director and editor, Joan's notable credits also include the international documentary hit, Beauty and the Beach and the Juno-nominated biography Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life. Along with her documentaries, she produced and directed the 26 x 30' biography series Lucky Breaks that aired on A&E's Biography Channel and produced 28 one minute profiles of Canadian musicians, directors and actors for Global's Northern Lights.

Joan is an alumnus of TMU's Media Arts program, the Canadian Film Centre, the Banff New Media Institute, OCAD University's Imagination Catalyst, and the National Screen Institute. Currently, she's a member of the Writers Guild of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Film and TV, and the Banff Spark Accelerator for Women.

Outside of CineFocus, Joan has shared her experience with students making short dramatic and documentary films in the Advanced Film Program at Humber College and as a professor of documentary and dramatic scriptwriting in the department of Media Studies at Niagara College. She began her television career working with Daniel Richler for three seasons on TVO's weekly literary series, Imprint.

Joan's commitment to the environment and to her community is demonstrated by her board position on the Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival, as a Climate Reality Leader trained by Al Gore, and as the elected chair of the Bathurst Quay Neighbourhood Association.
- IMDb mini biography by: Joan Prowse