Anti-Oppressive Film Series: Watermelon Woman
- November 18, 2022
- 2:00 PM - 4:30 CST
- Damen Center Cinema
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Faculty Center of Ignatian Pedagogy
Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy, facultycenter@luc.edu - Open to the public.
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Details
Description: The Watermelon Woman is a 1996 American romantic comedy-drama film written, directed, and edited by Cheryl Dunye. It stars Dunye as Cheryl, a 25-year-old Black lesbian working a day job in a video store in Philadelphia while trying to make a film about a black actress from the 1930s known for playing the stereotypical *mammy* roles relegated to Black actresses during the period.
Why this film?: The Watermelon Woman (1996) employs bold stylistic choices to ultimately challenge that traditional collective consciousness of whiteness and the White male gaze as we know it. By leaning into the subversive sensibilities of New Queer Cinema and taking on a genre-bending pseudo-documentary approach, the film introduces a Black lesbian gaze and lays bare Hollywood¿s racist origins. Dunye¿s work is also the first feature film directed by a Black lesbian woman and is known as a landmark in New Queer Cinema.
More than its very well-deserved accolades, The Watermelon Woman shines so brightly as a guiding star in cinema because it offers a deeply intersectional and boisterous look at the day-to-day meanderings of Black queer lives, and lived-in experiences of Black lesbian women, their sexual exploits, and both the deep struggles and joys they face¿all mediated by their own gaze.
Asynchronous Film Link: https://www.kanopy.com/en/luc/video/110276 (for asynchronous viewing, accessible on Kanopy only with LUC UVID)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwJc6hVgMDk
