Marusya Bociurkiw

Filmmaker
female
Born
1958
in
BC
Canada
,
British Columbia CA
Lives in
Vancouver , BC
Canada
,
British Columbia CA
Biography

Filmmaker, video artist, writer, educator. NSCAD-trained Bociurkiw has worked for over two decades in all three Canadian metropoles, based in Vancouver since the mid-1990s. Early works addressed the interface of gender, class and geopolitics, while sexual identity emerged as a theme of an essayistic and narrative hybrid practice with Playing with Fire (1986, 75). Bodies in Trouble (1990, 15), an attempt to situate lesbian eroticism in the context of rightwing backlash, was full of the positive imagery of an ideal couple, equal parts sensual bedplay and defiant demonstrations, equal parts Toronto, Montreal and the no-dyke's-land in between, full of images of borderlines, passengers in transit, and very Canadian transportation images, full also of a sensibility of exile, liminality and melancholy. In the long-gestated Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Haunted Body (1999, 45), Bociurkiw developed the playful format of the ideological essay narrative, setting the girl detective up for an investigation of the politics of sexual abuse and the “false memory syndrome.” Since 1990, Bociurkiw concentrated increasingly on her writing, often accenting her Ukrainian heritage. She has also given illustrated lectures on lesbian resonances on television and in music video, popular on the queer community festival circuit, and has taught at Concordia, York, SFU, and UBC.