Karen Everett: Documenting the Lesbian Experience
by Jason Clark and Joel McDonald
Karen Everet is an independent filmmaker, educator, and business owner living in San Francisco, California. Her award-winning documentaries and personal film memoirs have played in festivals worldwide, aired on television, and are distributed to the educational and home video markets.
After attending Brigham Young University in the early 1980s, Everett moved to Massachusetts, came out as a lesbian, and fell in love with a woman.
Two of Everett’s Mormon-relevant documentaries are My Femme Divine and Framing Lesbian Fashion.
Part memoir and part documentary, My Femme Divine draws from Mormon teachings and Jungian psychology to explore the butch/femme mystique. Throughout this remarkably crafted film, two lively groups talk butch-to-butch and femme-to-femme about yin/yang chemistry and a love that borders on worship.
Framing Lesbian Fashion includes a semi-autobiographical account of director Karen Everett’s “fashion journey” from a traditional Mormon student at Brigham Young University to coming out in Northampton, Mass.–nicknamed “Lesbianville, U.S.A.”
Everett directed a personal documentary, Women in Love, the intimate story of seven women navigating their love lives.
Until 2012, Everett taught at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where she received her Master’s degree in Journalism in 1991. She is now the owner of New Doc Editing, which provides documentary film editing and consulting services.
Updated December 7, 2020