Shawna Dempsey

A Day in the Life of a Bull-Dyke follows a big boned butch into skirmishes, drag, and the arms of a beautiful recruit. The public and private lives of this "strange animal" are explored with the reverence and glee found in the educational exposés like Reefer Madness and bad-boy films like Rebel without a Cause. However, because this fictionalized lesbian history is a first-person narrative, it is filled with all the joy, pain, and ambivalence each of us experiences while negotiating a marginalized identity.

Good Citizen: Betty Baker is a tongue-in-cheek mystery, full of unexpected twists. It features Betty, a civic-minded housewife who inhabits a cartoonish, 2-D, 1950s-inspired world, replete with narrow-minded peril. The story begins when Prince Philip goes missing and Betty finds a clue that leads her on a thrilling chase from her neighbour’s trash, to a strangely exciting all-girls bar, to the local chapter of 100% Women. Accompanied by the musical stylings of Marilyn Lerner, this frolicking satire irreverently unravels right-wing family values.

This queer ecology documentary explores the sexual diversity of the wildlife around us. Director May Matchim draws connections between these incredible species and her own journey accepting her Transness. The title is a reference to the green frog, an amphibian which is able to change its sex as it matures. This film includes a variety of animal and plant subjects, including same-sex bird parents raising chicks together, and a group of salamanders that's entirely female. It also examines the exclusionary attitudes in biology and conservation throughout time, and how these attitudes have influenced our understanding of animal behaviour.

Lesbian National Parks and Services: A Force of Nature follows the intrepid Lesbian Rangers as they patrol, educate, and illustrate lesbian survival skills. This documentary about the Force archly parodies the so-called objectivity of educational films, while playfully recasting the wilds from a lesbian perspective, calling into question prevalent notions of nature and normalcy.

Amerika, Zed and Kyle are good friends until the excitingly undermedicated bitch goddess Trasha enters the frame, cutting Kyle off from his friends and their vacuous and unencumbered world of beer and porn. Amerika and Zed aim to free their friend from the clutches of his nutburger girlfriend by enlisting the aid of the Sappho Carpet Cleaners for some wet work. The plan goes awry when Trasha and her psychosis find themselves a paying gig and tables are turned, trashed and burned.

Lesbian National Parks and Services' Endangered Species are a series of public service announcements, created by the indefatigable Lesbian Rangers, who serve the lesbian wilds from dawn to dusk and well beyond.

Girl meets girl, still likes boy, and all hell breaks loose.

At long last, everything you've always wanted to know about "down there" but were afraid to ask. A tender tale wherein our heroine, Ms. V..soul sisters her way into your heart with the hottest rap this side of the uterus. She sings!!! She dances!!! She's Big!!! It's a wear and care manual, it's a delightful tour.

Half-breed Alice attempts to become queen and struggles with the Red Queen and the White Queen's disapproval of her racial transgressions.

What Does a Lesbian Look Like? was a video created for Much Music, Canada's music video station. A fast-paced spoken word piece, it exposes all the common myths and stereotypes about lesbians, and revels in them!

This video tape is a triptych about love and desire.

A five-part, site-specific installation and single-channel videotape. The piece manipulates shards of narrative into a meditation on the construction of self and culture through language. Archaeology and You juxtaposes historical theory with ever-timely questions such as “What do we have to say?” and “Why do we bother writing it down?”

Using the metaphor of suburban architecture, Homogeneity archly critiques the desire for conformity within the queer community.

In Vigilance, a woman is dragged through an empty field in scenario reminiscent of horror movies and news stories. But she is alert, impassive, and remains vigilantly focused on the camera. This hand-processed, Super 8 film juxtaposes degraded, awkwardly-staged footage of every woman's worst nightmare with an interior monologue regarding media representation of sexualized violence. The piece asks how violent, misogynist images play out in our psyches and in our culture.

The Wild West heroine Calamity Jane roams through time. Excluded from history, she revels in lore. “I dreamed it better. I dreamed it big.” North American Western mythology is subverted, celebrating an alternative outsider position. Featuring a scratched and mixed score by contemporary audio artist Michelle Irving.

Medusa Raw, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan’s first video, is a re-telling of the classical Medusa myth from the Medusa’s perspective.