Karin Lee is a Canadian filmmaker. She is an adjunct professor of film at the University of British Columbia. Her 2000 documentary, Made in China, won a Gemini Award.

Lee was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia.^[1] She is a fourth generation Chinese Canadian,^[1] born to cultural activist parents.^[2] Her great-grandfather, Mah Bing Kee, was a Chinese labourer who immigrated to California in 1861 to work in the gold fields, then to Nanaimo, British Columbia, in 1878.^[3][4] Her father ran a communist bookstore on Hastings Street in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside from the 1960s to 1980s; she wrote and directed the short film Comrade Dad about the store.^[5]

With Lorraine Chan and the Chinese Cultural Centre of Vancouver, Lee co-founded the Chinese Film and Video Festival, which ran from 1994 through 1996.^[6]

Lee's documentary Made in China (2000) explores the lives of Chinese-born children adopted by Canadian families.^[7] A review in the Chicago Tribune described it as "thoughtful" and "engrossing".^[8] The film won the Canada Award at the 2001 Gemini Awards.^[9]

In 2018, SUM Gallery, run by Vancouver's Queer Arts Festival, featured her work in its debut exhibition, Karin Lee: QueerSUM 心.^[1] The exhibition included three films that examine facets of Asian Canadian activism.^[2] A review in Canadian Art noted Lee's aim to "normalize the non-linear narratives in the queer and feminist Chinese community and to propose how those lived experiences are still relevant today at the intersection of race, gender and sexuality."^[2]

In 2019, it was reported that Lee was working on a documentary about Velma Demerson, a white Canadian woman who was jailed for being in a relationship with a Chinese immigrant.^[10][11]

Lee is an adjunct professor of film at the University of British Columbia.^[12]