Don't @ Me with Justin Simien
The Trailblazer: Cheryl Dunye
Cheryl Dunye’s 1996 film “The Watermelon Woman” was the first feature directed by a black lesbian.
By Justin Simien • • 40m ListenCheryl Dunye is a filmmaker, artist, and activist. The political and personal converge in her 1996 film, “The Watermelon Woman,” the first feature directed by a black lesbian. Dunye stars as a fictive Cheryl, who begins dating a white woman while researching the history of an early film “mammy” character, credited only as The Watermelon Woman.
Being first would terrify some, but not Cheryl, who grew up in Philadelphia, and came up in the era of ACT UP among artists, writers, and filmmakers like Marlon Riggs, Essex Hemphill and Joe Beam.
Recently, Cheryl directed a short film, “Black is Blue,” a story of gender transition set in Oakland. She is developing it into a feature for likely 2020 release.
Tongues Untied (1991) by Marlon Riggs
Essex Hemphill at Poetry Foundation
Joe Beam at WHYY, editor of In the Life: a Black Gay Anthology
The Watermelon Woman (1996) on FilmStruck and DVD
