Today's Female Filmmaker spotlight is on a lesbian trailblazer Cheryl Dunye and her trailblazing film The Watermelon Woman in 1996 that prominently features an interracial lesbian relationship. Let's take a look!
Cheryl was originally born in Liberia and grew up mostly in Philadelphia. Her work started off in the world of short independent films in the late 80s and early 90s. She tended to blend fiction with documentary filmmaking to make something she dubbed "Dunyementaries". She worked her way through learning how to be at the helms of her short films until 1996 when she wrote, directed, and starred in her feature-length debut: The Watermelon Woman.
The Watermelon Woman is a landmark lesbian film. Cheryl stars as a Black lesbian who works at a video store. Her day job is to work at the store, but her passion is to make a documentary about a mythical 1930s actress who went uncredited in countless films, known only as The Watermelon Woman. She wants to find out this actress's identity and winds up meeting a few people in Philly who recall knowing the actress. It turns out that the actress she is studying was also a lesbian who had an interracial love affair with a white female director. So while Cheryl dives deep into her research, she starts to emulate the life of this star by also starting a lesbian love affair with a white girl that she meets at the store, played by Guinevere Turner. The two of these girls explore their sexualities and we have a blast exploring their bodies in the process.
Dear reader, let me be vulnerable with you for a moment. You should know that I, Vavavooma Thurman, loves video stores. I absolutely love them. I am SO nostalgic for them. I spent all of my youth in and out of video stores. I worked at a video store. I will watch anything that is based in a video store. I just love them, so I am already set up to love The Watermelon Woman. That being said, this movie is definitely worth watching for any film buffs out there. It is considered an essential film in the New Queer Cinema movement as well as an important 90s indie flick. She got the idea for this film in 1993 when she took a class on Black film history. She learned that a lot of the Black actresses in early films were simply uncredited in films. That was the inspiration for the idea, with the title being a play on the Melvin Van Peebles' classic The Watermelon Man. The movie was positively reviewed pretty much across the board. So then...what was next for Dunye?
She had a quiet career in the early 2000s, but she made an interesting departure from her usual artsy fair to direct the comedy My Baby's Daddy. That introduced us to Paula Jai Parker has a mom who does not dress like any mom you might know. She wears see-thru lace tops that show her nipples, lingerie, crop tops, and all kinds of things to be the hottest MILF in this PG-13 comedy that also starred Eddie Griffin.
Cheryl never stopped being Cheryl...which includes showing off her hard nipples in her own film. She was back at it in 2010's political thriller The Owls in which she went topless. The film is about two middle-aged lesbians who accidentally murder a young woman and have to hide her body. Classic problem! We are just glad that Cheryl doesn't hide HER body.
Cheryl has been everywhere lately which is due in part to the rise in Black entertainment over the last decade. She has directed episodes of Dear White People, Queen Sugar, and Lovecraft Country just to name a few. She directed that hot sex scene with Jurnee Smollett in the episode called "Strange Case".
Cheryl has come such a long way in her career. Imagine! She went from making a passion project that was unapologetically Black and queer to being a go-to director in Black prestige and sci-fi television right now. That is a powerful career trajectory and it helps that she does not shy away from filming nude scenes.
Watch one of her original sex scenes here:
