Melissa Levin

Film- and videomaker, documentarist, teacher. Bred on the US East Coast and living in Chicago and San Francisco before migrating to Toronto, Levin has been a prolific and prizewinning chronicler and satirist of urban lesbian lifestyles since 1997. Often featuring Levin's partner, visual artist Nina Levitt, her works are popular in queer festivals, including the Baking with Butch series (2000-2001, Episode 1, 5 , Episode 2, 10), a comic clash of cooking show inanity with subcultural standup. Cherries in the Snow (An Ode to Joan Nestle) (2002, 4) is an artier initiative, a symbolic celebration of lesbian herstory through the transformation of a traditional housewife activity into a public cruising ritual: hanging out the undies to dry. Levin taught video at Toronto's Triangle queer high school program before making Class Queers (co-dir. and writer Roxane Spicer, 2003, 53) a one-hour documentary on three of the programme's brave students, an intimate and risk-taking verity account that was broadcast on CBC Newsworld and other cable venues, marred unfortunately by the curse of the CBC voice-over. Levin has also been active in Inside Out.