Allison (Sunny) Dean

Allison ‘Sunny’ Dean is a documentary film and media artist from Arizona. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz’s Film and Digital Media program, they relocated to San Francisco to be more centralized in their work surrounding film as a form of advocacy. Allison’s work focuses on the narratives of unintended community spaces and landscapes, and the portraits of the people within them. Their mediums and methods include experimental film, documentary/non-narrative, analog 16mm, audiovisual media, text and spoken word, law and justice, queer centered stories, and social aid. They received an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University in 2026. Their thesis focused on San Quentin State Prison’s visitor check-in waiting room, and culminated in a short experimental documentary film, as well as a multimedia installation reimagining of the room itself.