A D A M C O M B S

Last year, we followed a team of marine scientists into the waters off Hornby Island, British Columbia, where kelp forests that once defined the coastline are quietly vanishing. 🍿Silent Sanctuary is now streaming free on YouTube. Watch the full film at the link in our bio. Silent Sanctuary follows the journey of Dr. Lauren Dykman and her team as they embark on a visionary study to restore kelp forests at scale amidst a rapidly warming ocean. If successful, their research could pave the way for restoration efforts across Canada and around the world. Thank you to every artist and collaborator who helped to bring this film to life. Directed by: @adamcombs and @carterkirilenko Starring: Dr. Lauren Dykman Featuring: Rob and Amanda Zielinski Producer: @carterkirilenko DP/Editor: @adamcombs Underwater Op: @rebs.world SA Unit: @gareth_williams Colorist: @camthecolorist Score: @yehezkelraz Graphic Design: @reesmorgan_ Supported by: @kelprescue , @regeneration.ca Special thanks: Hornby Island Diving, @bamfieldmsc @oceanculturelife #SilentSanctuary #KelpForest #OceanConservation #ClimateAction #MarineScience #OceanRestoration #BluePlanet #PacificNorthwest #BritishColumbia #EnvironmentalFilm #DocumentaryFilm #IndieFilm #OceanLife #UnderwaterFilmmaking #ClimateSolutions #NatureDocumentary #ProtectOurOceans #MarineBiology #EcosystemRestoration #OceanOptimism

in the field with @bbcstoryworks // full system overwhelm from the ecological and spiritual resonance that comes from being in a place like this. the warmth of hospitality, grandeur, and guidance permeating my being. reminded that alignment in life is a byproduct of being attentive to the quiet and subtle nudges that whisper to you your souls longing. pick up the invisible thread and follow it. pay careful attention, assemble the fragments, allow them to take you @bbcstoryworks @iucn_congress @janegoodallinst @rewildafrica @carterkirilenko @jenseraq @oaqqalu @oceans_north @aviaajaegedelynge @htpotter @moorefound

Earlier this winter, I was sent to Greenland with @bbcstoryworks and my brother @carterkirilenko . The assignment: to create a film on how Arctic communities are adapting through knowledge-sharing and collaboration. Greenlandic-Inuit families whose livelihoods, culture, and identity are inseparable from the sea are navigating profound change amidst a rapidly warming ocean. Melting sea ice, unstable fish populations, and loss of cultural practices begin to reveal a deeper question that runs beneath the surface: what happens to a people’s identity when the landscape that shaped it begins to disappear? Knowledge passed on not through textbooks but through lived experience, carried quietly across generations reminds us of this false separation between humans and “nature”. We are not separate or apart from nature… It’s identity, culture, and the sacred source that lies within your very consciousness. Full film through the link in my profile. 🌀 —————————— SERIES PRESENTED BY IUCN PRODUCED BY BBC StoryWorks PRESENTED BY Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation AGENCY Genero PRODUCTION COMPANY ReWild EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Alexandra Cockburn CREATIVE PRODUCER Jude Parker SERIES LEAD Edward Hunt CLIENT REP Holly Potter COMPLIANCE Colin George DIRECTOR / PRODUCER Carter Kirilenko DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Adam Combs HEAD OF PRODUCTION Megan May Nelson PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE Livia Rao PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Grace Carter EDITOR / SOUND / COLOR Adam Combs FEATURING Aqqalu Olsen, Jenseraq Poulsen WITH THANKS TO Oceans North Kalaallit Nunaat, Ilulissat Isfjordscenter, Kalaallit Nunaanni Aalisartut Piniartullu Kattuffiat, Flemming Nørgaard #greenland #documentaryfilm #indigenousknowledge #oceanconservation #ilulissat

Earlier this month, filming with Lil’wat Nation as they brought fire back to the land surrounding their community of Xetólacw. What unfolded was the culmination of three years of careful planning. A cultural and prescribed fire aimed at protecting the townsite from future wildfires while restoring plant species, mushrooms, and ecosystems that have long depended on fire to regenerate. Crews from Lil’wat Forestry Ventures, BC Wildfire Service, and local fire departments came together to ignite a 34 hectare stretch of forest adjacent to the Mount Currie community. It was a unique opportunity for me to witness traditional knowledge and modern fire science meeting in real time and I’m grateful to have been a part of telling this story alongside the effervescent @jaimebeijaflor and @fnessbc

Co-Directors Carter Kirilenko and Adam Combs take us inside the making of Silent Sanctuary, a film following marine scientists studying disappearing kelp forests off Hornby Island in British Columbia. In this Filmmaking Unlocked feature, Carter and Adam share the behind-the-scenes reality of documenting a live scientific study: the uncertainty, the challenges, what went wrong, and the lessons they learned along the way. Head to the link in our bio to watch the full film on Youtube. 🌊🎥

Last year, we followed a team of marine scientists into the waters off Hornby Island, British Columbia, where kelp forests that once defined the coastline are quietly vanishing. “Silent Sanctuary follows the journey of Dr. Lauren Dykman and her team as they embark on a visionary study to restore kelp forests at scale amidst a rapidly warming ocean. If successful, their research could pave the way for restoration efforts across Canada and around the world.” Silent Sanctuary is now streaming free online. Watch the full film through the link in my profile. 🌹 Thank you to every artist and collaborator who helped bring this film to life. Directed by: @adamcombs and @carterkirilenko Starring: Dr. Lauren Dykman Featuring: Rob and Amanda Zielinski Producer: @carterkirilenko DP/Editor: @adamcombs Underwater Op: @rebs.world SA Unit: @gareth_williams Colorist: @camthecolorist Score: @yehezkelraz Graphic Design: @reesmorgan_ Supported by: @kelprescue , @regeneration.ca Special thanks: Hornby Island Diving, @bamfieldmsc @oceanculturelife #oceanconservation #climateaction #marinescience #documentaryfilm #ecosystemrestoration

wintering 🌀⚔️ see you gorgeous mfrs in the spring 🧙🏽‍♂️

heading into the Ilulissat icejords at dawn • breaching fin whales, calving 21,000 year old icebergs and the swarming clouds of seabirds beckoning overhead… all bathed in the iridescent glow of deep arctic hues • these moments echo in the dreamt corners of my mind… a remembrance and picking up of the invisible thread

the serpents truth lies in its ability to transgress the liminal • when I was seven I remember watching a desert snake molt its skin, writhing slowly in the red earth under a sharp sun. arduous, awkward, steady. the impression lingered in memory as an icon of truth, whispering to me the storied beginnings of death as the clarified truth of all life • the cosmos is relational at every level… and between levels… relationship is the foundational energy & shape of the fabric of reality. it is in dying that we participate in truly living, expanding inward into a posture of active kinship • underneath rotting scales the snake skin is soft. its vulnerability creating fear and a desire for familiarity, its receptivity bringing forth an inner knowing and trust of what lies out of sight just beyond the horizon… caught between the loosening of the old and embodying of the new. in these thresholds lies our potential and one of our oldest divinities. the ability to expand and transmute. metanoia. an invitation to awaken and consciously choose one’s path • it will be found wherever one looks - the universe continually birthing and consuming itself. it is the terror felt when an old identity dissolves and our narratives can no longer fiend control. it is in the dark and decomposing soil that bears fruit. it is the transitory hour between sun and moon when the veil is thin • all of these are deaths and dawnings of a universe eternally & particularly witnessing itself and realizing its way into existence •

nature creating its own alters • beauty is not quality it is affect, that is how we note its arrival. beauty is an elevation of soul :: when you experience beauty you encounter something. this primordial presence is the waking up kind, the becoming kind. an encounter that promotes good healthy trouble, making you a little bit dangerous as you’re a bit unpredictable :: we all have a dyslexia of the heart, often mistaking easy pleasure for beauty, swallowing the fake news from our own psyches :: beauty always asks something of us • “in every experience of beauty, we are being prepared for eternity”

six fulsome years married to this honey babe ⚡️ I love you Bethany, I got a lot of words for you as I always do but today I reflect on the synchronistic words of greats who have gone before us, words that seem to have been written specifically about you and what it means to be in relationship with you, one by Campbell and another from Wagamese… “One of the boldest things you could possibly do would be to marry that ideal that you’ve fallen for. Then you face a real job, because everything has been projected onto him or her. This goes beyond lust; this is something that goes way down. It pulls everything out. This anima/animus is the fish line that has caught your whole unconscious, and everything’s going to come up — the Midgard Serpent, everything down in the bottom. This is what you marry.” “Love is not about rescue, I understand now - it’s about allowing. In the Ojibway world, love is the process of you leading me back to who I am. You do that by stepping back and allowing the creative, nurturing energy of the universe to work. That’s the most courageous thing you can do when you love somebody… we’d found communion with one another… loyal to the vision of our togetherness.”

// questions as womb i told her i often mistreat life’s questions like street signs… each question a fork in the road dressed with the angst of needing to choose the correct way. the right path leading to the next question and so on. viewing our journey here no more a puzzle we are needing to decipher or a maze leading to one possible exit. life becomes excruciatingly flat. she confronted me and helped me realize what a poor way of questioning this was. our lives are not predetermined mazes of yes or no existential questions. our questions are not street signs. they are the language of the sacred. i saw steam rising and the image of a nyc subway staircase, a portal descending into the dark underworld. i thought of caves, wading deep into the earth, the unconscious. i thought of wombs as the birthplace of all life. this is what questions are. caves. portals. wombs. there is no right or wrong only an invitation to descend into the depths and perhaps, come out crying covered in blood with something of value that will heal the world.