Some advice from filmmaker Cheryl Dunye: 'Keep putting yourself out where you belong'
Dunye's 1996 debut, The Watermelon Woman, is being added to the Criterion Collection. It's a long overdue honor for the filmmaker who shaped how Black LGBTQ+ stories are told.
Growing up in Philadelphia, Cheryl Dunye says she was fascinated by the stories reflected in her mother's scrapbook photos. She studied filmmaking in college and graduate school but didn't see people who looked like her on screen.
Dunye changed that with her 1996 debut, It is the first feature-length film written and directed by a Black lesbian. In it, Dunye plays a fictionalized version of her 25-year-old self, a video store clerk aspiring to become a filmmaker. In her off hours, she watches films from the 1930s and '40s with Black actresses such as Hattie McDaniel and Louise Beavers. However, they're often relegated to racially stereotyped roles; some aren't even
