The Watermelon Woman

The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend (Guinevere Turner). Balancing breezy romantic comedy with a serious inquiry into the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood, The Watermelon Woman slyly rewrites long-standing constructions of race and sexuality on-screen, introducing an important voice in American cinema.
(description taken from criterion.com)

This landmark of Queer cinema is the story of Cheryl (Cheryl Dunye), a twenty-something Black lesbian struggling to make a documentary about Fae Richards, a beautiful and elusive 1930s Black film actress popularly known as the Watermelon Woman. While uncovering the meaning of Richards’s life, Cheryl experiences an upheaval in her own: her love affair with Diana (Guinevere Turner), a beautiful white woman, and her interactions with the gay and Black communities are subject to the comic yet biting criticism of her best friend, Tamara (Valerie Walker). Meanwhile, each answer Cheryl discovers about the Watermelon Woman evokes a flurry of new questions about herself and her future.