🎬 The Watermelon Woman (1996)

Cheryl Dunye | 1996 | USA | 90' | EN subtitles

The Watermelon Woman is a landmark of the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s, a time of queer formal experimentation with cinematic language. These mostly low-budget indie features were characterised by excess, irreverence and the revolutionary cynicism of the AIDS period. The first feature film of Cheryl Dunye, and the first ever feature film directed by a Black lesbian, it stars Dunye as Cheryl, a young Black lesbian working a day job in a video store while trying to make a film about Fae Richards, a Black actress from the 1930s known for playing the stereotypical "mammy" roles relegated to Black actresses during the period. A special screening on a special day!