Lynne Fernie
(1946 - living) Canada
Artist and filmmaker
Fernie has a fierce intolerance of injustice and unfairness as a result of experiencing it first-hand, growing up one of three children of an impoverished sole support mother on the wrong side of the tracks of Kilowna, a small town in British Columbia.
Office work brought her to Toronto, where at the age of 27 a feminist and lesbian light bulb went on. She was able to put her mother's life in the context of an historical vision of women and she was able to unearth her own sexual fantasies. Shortly therefater she had her first affair with a woman.
Fernie achieved international recognition as the co-director of two lesbian-specific films, Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992), and Fiction and Other Truths: A Film about Jane Rule (1994). Until 1994, Fernie was known in Canada as a visual artist and cultural animator often working in highly collaborative work.
Source: excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, from WWII to Present Day, Routledge, London, 2001
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