Cast:
Cheryl Dunye (Cheryl), Guinevere Turner (Diana), Valarie Walker (Tamara), Lisa Marie Bronson (Fae "The Watermelon Woman" Richards), Cheryl Clarke (June Walker), Irene Dunye (Herself), Brian Freeman (Lee Edwards), Ira Jeffries (Shirley Hamilton), with Alexandra Juhasz (Martha Page), and appearances by Camille Paglia, David Rakoff and Sarah Schulman. Written and Directed by Cheryl Dunye.
Review:
“I did the research, I did look in Black film history, and found nothing but homophobia and omission. I did look at queer film history, I read Vito Russo, and found no mention of race. So I hope that my film spurs these younger people to think about their identities within the context of representation in the media.”
The important thing to know is that this is a film made by someone with plenty of experience behind the camera when it comes to it being their debut feature. Born in Liberia but raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Cherly Dunye actually had an early interest in political theory when studying in college. She had studied at Michigan State University before realizing that her purpose wasn't in that field, going back near home to Temple University. What she saw around her (the mid-1980s, specifically citing Wilson Goode as a "Black mayor who dropped a bomb on a group of people" [May 13, 1985]) that time was the idea of using media as a tool. Her first video in that regard came with meeting a poet named Sapphire, with whom she mixed her reading of "Wild Thing" with images filmed by Dunye that served as her senior thesis. With her idea of art and politics as one that can co-exist in the same world, she soon studied (and graduated from) Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of Art before soon starting to make her own films, ones later dubbed as "Dunyementaries" that mixed fact and fiction that related to her experiences as a black lesbian filmmaker. The basis for what became this film started in 1993 when Dunye was trying to do research for Black film history when it came to women for early films, which saw a number of times where the cast members were not mentioned by name. The resulting film was one funded by a variety of sources, such as an endowment from the National Endowment for the Arts alongside fundraising. When it came time to purchasing the use of archives to use for the film, the costs were too much to use, so Dunye used a different idea in collaboration with photographer Zoe Leonard to stage several old photos, several of which were sold off at auction to help raise funds. The fake film within a film in "Plantation Memories", was directed by Douglas McKeown while he and Dunye wrote for it. She had various inspirations when it came to being a filmmaker that engaged with who she was and what she wanted to express, and it probably makes sense that the film's title is a play on Melvin Van Peebles' Watermelon Man (1970). Watermelon Woman was a fair hit on the festival circuit, one that attracted attention for a particular scene that inflamed the general person that thinks offensive stuff is getting shown (one that had funding from the NEA, so I mean whiny politicians).
For the most part, Dunye has directed on a regular basis since then, whether for television such as HBO's Stranger Inside (2001), which she collaborated with actual female inmates for the story or finding out the lack of compatibility in studio fare with My Baby's Daddy (2004), short features, or for general television dramas. What one sees for 90 minutes is a mix of old-looking footage to go with grainy videotape and just usual film to make for an experience that plays with form and how one tries to tell a story that hasn't always been told to a wider audience. The women that existed in that era as presences to see on camera in Butterfly McQueen, Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers are represented within what you see here in the pursuit of trying to reclaim what had been shuttered to the sidelines or forgotten completely. That footage accomplishes the goal required in allowing the viewer to look upon it as both creation and history that isn't silly facade. It just so happens to also be a movie of self-discovery in the nature of realizing what really matters when it comes to what one thinks they are. Dunye makes a compelling presence to watch discover the nature of what means the most in the web of hang-ups of fact and fiction. The scenes spent with her and Walker are just as interesting as the ones spent with her and Turner when it comes to examining the hang-ups and hypocrisies that arise with them just as much as you see around your own circle of friends. One is basically watching three different films play out: the film in the film (fictional to us), the film of trying to document that to people who don't know who the subject was, and the film of trying to cope with the unraveling that comes in finding who they are in the lesbian space and as a filmmaker (one scene that comes and go on is when she is trying to look at something in the street with her camera and is accosted by cops that think she was a guy mugger, consider how the scene just ends). The doors that open up are as interesting as they are complicated. There are a few moments spent interviewing actual figures of culture (gay or otherwise), whether that is Camille Paglia expounding about film theory and arguing about the "mammy role" or Sarah Schulman playing an archivist with particularly touchiness to letting people actually take photos of archival footage left in a box that make for humor when it comes to perceived allies. As a film that yearns to tell its own type of story for representation that doesn't slam itself in the muck of overindulgence while having plenty of imagination to let the audience explore for themselves what is important in the realm of history and storytelling, this is a pretty good effort to get the match rolling for others to follow in Dunye's footsteps.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
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