The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend (Guinevere Turner). Balancing breezy romantic comedy with a serious inquiry into the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood, The Watermelon Woman slyly rewrites long-standing constructions of race and sexuality on-screen, introducing an important voice in American cinema.
Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American director, producer, and writer who emerged as part of the "queer new wave" of young filmmakers of the 1990s. She is known as the first out black lesbian to ever direct a feature film with her 1996 film The Watermelon Woman, which won the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival. Dunye has received numerous other awards and honors, including a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2019 Justice and Inclusion Award from the Berkeley Film Foundation. Often set within a domestic or personal context, her stories foreground issues of race, sexuality, and identity, and are peppered with deconstructive elements. These devices, and her appearance in her own films blur the distinctions between fiction and "real life”. Dunye’s work is defined by her distinctive narrative voice, a hybrid of documentary and fiction dubbed "Dunyementary" style. She has made over 15 films, including STRANGER INSIDE, THE OWLS, and MY BABY’S DADDY, and MOMMY IS COMING. Dunye has directed many episodic series, including Ava Duvernay’s Queen Sugar, Dear White People, Bridgerton, Lovecraft Country, and more recently, You and The Hunting Wives. In 2018, she launched her Oakland-based production company called JINGLETOWN FILMS. Presently, she is working on her next independent feature film, BLACK IS BLUE.
