The First Movie with a Black Lesbian Lead Pioneered a Whole New Genre

Welcome to " Reel Women ," a new column highlighting important women in the world of cinema, from on-screen characters to real-life filmmakers.

Dunye plays a loose version herself, also named Cheryl, in this docu-fiction hybrid that has since been dubbed "Dunyementary" style. The story is fictional, yet draws a lot from her real life as well as film history, and mixes in documentary aesthetics like talking heads and street interviews. In the film, 25-year-old Cheryl works at a video store—an unmistakably 90s setting that'll make you nostalgic for pre-streaming days—and spends her days researching for and making her documentary about a black actress from the 1930s who played stereotypical mammy roles and was simply credited as "The Watermelon Woman."

Viewers may confuse the Watermelon Woman—named Faye Richards—for a real-life figure, especially since Black women really were limited to such roles in Hollywood pictures in that era. Richards, it turns out, is fictional, but the trope certainly isn't. And we are reminded that to be a Black female cinephile like Cheryl is to face constant rejection of your own image from an industry you both admire and struggle to see yourself in.

The Watermelon Woman is Dunye's way of taking control of this image by being both behind and in front of the camera—in real life and in the movie—and in her story, she even finds out that the Watermelon Woman herself was "in the family" (read: queer). By diving into the Watermelon Woman’s backstory, Cheryl gives this one-dimensional mammy character a real persona and makes her someone with a whole life outside of the few degrading parts she was offered.

This reveal serves as both a regretful reminder of forgotten actresses of the past as well as an elated discovery, on Cheryl's part, that perhaps there's space for her in this industry. Early in the film, she initially introduces herself as an "aspiring filmmaker," but by the end her language becomes more confident and she drops the "aspiring" part of the title.

Cheryl finds out that Richards was not just dating a woman, but her director Martha Page—a white woman. Here's where things get meta: Cheryl in the movie also starts dating a white woman, a flirtatious video store customer named Diana (played by Guinevere Turner, who wrote the queer indie comedy Go Fish in 1994 and would go on to write the screenplay for American Psycho in 2000). Cheryl Dunye in real life was dating The Watermelon Woman's producer, Alexandra Juhasz, also a white woman, who portrayed Richards' lover, Martha Page, in the film.

In the movie, Cheryl's relationship with a white woman causes tension between her and her friends, especially her best friend Tamara, a fellow Black lesbian. Cheryl's blackness comes into a question in a rather harsh confrontation with Tamara, and she starts to notice that Diana's liberal ways come off rather tone-deaf. Diana is well-meaning but if this film were set in the present time, she could have easily pulled off the "I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could" line from Get Out. With this relationship, Dunye addresses the questions of an interracial lesbian relationship never before discussed on screen.

Cheryl’s relationship with Diana also caused a bit of drama behind the scenes as well, as Pieter Hoekstra, a scandalized Michigan Republican, threatened to pull the $31,500 grant Dunye received to make the film after seeing the steamy (but very tame and tasteful) sex scene between the two women. He objected to taxpayer support of such art, but failed to earn support for his cause from Congress.

What remains is an important artifact of New Queer Cinema, one that not only made history but remains relevant after more than two decades. Cheryl’s relationship with Diana ends with many open-ended questions, perhaps frustratingly so if you were expecting concrete answers, but Dunye doesn’t impose, especially when this story is so personal to her. It’s more important to note that she brought these questions to the screen in the first place.