The Watermelon Woman
First screened in July 2003 / Most recently screened in February 2013
Director: Cheryl Dunye. Cast: Cheryl Dunye, Valarie Walker, Guinevere Turner, Lisa Marie Bronson, Shelley Olivier, Gail Lloyd, Cheryl Clarke, Irene Dunye, Camille Paglia, Sarah Schulman, Kat Robertson, V.S. Brodie, Brian Freeman. Screenplay: Cheryl Dunye. Twitter Capsule:
Limited by budget; aspiration sometimes outstrips ability. But real wit and sophistication in its conception.
VOR:④
Faux-doc where that form packs real punch. Black lesbian self-representation. Witty complication of what we assume "black history" encompasses. You've seen tons of all three, right?
Ed. Jun 2013:For my fullest treatment of this movie, albeit in a slightly different register of writing, see Chapter 3 of my book The Desiring-Image: Gilles Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema, available here from Oxford University Press or here from Amazon.
