• Short Bio
• Extended Bio

Dempsey Rice is the daughter of a therapist and an avid amateur photographer – her father took over 2,000 family photos when she was a child.  When she was in High School her classmates used to groan when she asked ‘yet another question.’ Is it any wonder that Dempsey grew up to become a documentarian?  It was the only profession where she could ask questions, listen to the stories people tell and document them using visual media.

Her work is the avenue through which she explores the core issues that compel her to create: family, personal history, story, connection, loss, legacy, listening, memory and ideas of home.  In addition to her own creative work, Dempsey creates videos for artists, authors and technology start-ups.

Dempsey is currently a Brooklyn Arts Council Artist in Residence at the Council Center for Senior Citizens in Midwood, Brooklyn.  That residency is growing into The Listening Project: Midwood, a video installation of interviews done with members of the Council Center.  The installation, put together with Jason Van Anden, represents the way in which an individual life, and the many lives within a community, are collaged, scrapped and quilted together to create a larger whole. 

Dempsey also creates documentary style promotional videos for artists, authors and technology start-ups.  Her clients include A.A. Knopf Publishers, Vintage Books, Oliver Sacks, M.D. and the artist Jason Van Anden.

FORGET ME NOTS (2010 -17 minutes), Dempsey’s short documentary about remembering, is currently playing at festivals around the world. FORGET ME NOTS acts as a turnkey that opens viewers to the glimpses of the people, places and ideas that make up remembrance but it also challenges the very nature of those remembrances.  FORGET ME NOTS is the recipient of a Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund Grant, a KKL Foundation Grant, a Mary Duke Biddle Foundation Grant and several in-kind and cash donations from individuals.

DAUGHTER OF SUICIDE (1999 - 72 minutes), Dempsey's debut documentary, premiered on HBO Signature in May of 2000 -- it is the story of her mother’s death by suicide and the process of family and friends’ healing after that suicide.  DAUGHTER OF SUICIDE is the recipient of a National Council on Family Relations Media Awards (First Place: Mental Health, Stress, Transition, & Crisis Management Category, 2001), a National Mental Health Association Media Award, (National Television: Educational or Pubic Service Programming Category, 2001) and a Cine Golden Eagle (2000) and received funding from Home Box Office, The Jerome Foundation, The Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund, The Women in Film Foundation, From the Heart Productions and R.E.M.

In 2003, Dempsey received a New York Emmy Award for being the Series Producer of IMNY, a youth documentary series produced by Downtown Community Television Center (DCTV) for WNYE/Channel 25 in New York City.  IMNY featured short documentaries made by New York City youth that explore the unique stories, neighborhoods and challenges of their lives. 

Dempsey has taught Video Diary and Modern Film classes in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Rutgers University-Newark in addition to teaching workshops and classes about documentary film proposal writing, budgeting and financing, at Film Video Arts, Women Make Movies, Downtown Community Television, CineWomen New York and the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers.  She has taught video production to New York City youth through the DCTV and Police Athletic League alliance at the PAL Schwartz Center in Brooklyn, New York.  In addition, Dempsey has worked full-time and freelanced as a public radio producer for radio programs including:  The Infinite Mind and Studio 360.  She has also written and produced audio tours. 

In 1994 Dempsey graduated with her MA (Econ.) in Visual Anthropology from The University of Manchester in England where she completed her short film AS LONG AS THEY’RE MUSLIM.  She received her BA from Syracuse University (Magna Cum Laude) in Photojournalism and Anthropology in 1991.

As a survivor of her mother’s suicide, Dempsey is committed to advocating for a proven, effective suicide prevention plan in the United States.  To that end, she was a part of the public private partnership that wrote New York State’s Suicide Prevention Plan.

In addition to her work as a documentarian, Dempsey can be found encouraging her children to ask questions… and then groaning when they ask too many!