Shawna Dempsey is a Canadian performance artist and filmmaker.
Dempsey and her frequent collaborator, Lorri Millan, have been creating short and cutting feminist pieces since 1989.
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.
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: 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.
Using the metaphor of suburban architecture, Homogeneity archly critiques the desire for conformity within the queer community.
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.
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.