[3] Her first “break” in her career began when she was called to work by producer Christa Singer on the documentary Adoption Stories for TVOntario.
[3] While working at the National Film Board of Canada, Dirse worked on over 70 film projects,[3] including a number of groundbreaking documentaries produced by Studio D including: Wisecracks (1992); Forbidden Love: the Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992); and Jane Rule: Fiction and Other Truths (1996).
[3] During her time at York, a lecture she gave at a conference in 2003 resulted in her theory of the female gaze in film being published in Women Filmmakers: Refocusing.
[5] Dirse looks at the female gaze through her cinematography work in the documentary film genre, analyzing aspects of pleasure and viewer identification.
[4] Longtime collaborator Lynne Fernie praised Dirse for having “an incredible gift for relating to the people she's filming so that they are relaxed and open when the camera is rolling...