Biography

Carly Usdin (born 1982) is an American director, writer, and producer. Usdin is best known for directing the 2016 film Suicide Kale and co-creating the comic book series Heavy Vinyl with Nina Vakueva. In 2019, they received the Jury Prize for Best Director for the short film Misdirection at the Los Angeles Diversity Film Festival. Carly has spent years making short-form narrative and branded content for clients like Funny or Die, CollegeHumor, Amy Poehler's Smart Girls, World of Wonder, CBS, Fullscreen, Astronauts Wanted, Portal A, TruTV, Viacom and YouTube. Most notably, they directed the third season of Awkwafina’s digital series Tawk, and Usdin’s campaigns for RuPaul’s Drag Race have won a One Show Pencil and multiple Promax BDA Awards. In 2013 they founded a digital production studio with their wife called Scheme Machine Studios. In 2019 Carly directed four episodes of the interactive comedy series Wizard School Dropout for Eko. Carly was also named to the 2019 cohort of Universal’s Directors Initiative and the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, class of 2019. Usdin is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.