This commentary contains some spoilers and may be better read after the screenings.
1996 saw the release of the Coen Brothers’ murky comedy Fargo. One of the qualities of the film which has fascinated audiences and critics ever since is its famous opening card: this is based on a true story. The story, which is actually fictional, troubles notions of truth, adaptation, and plausibility and should give us all pause for thought each time we devour true crime drama.
But three days before Fargo was released in the US, another comedy hit cinema screens which was more ambitious and more politically subversive in its play with truth. The Watermelon Woman, however, made a far smaller splash than Fargo. The reasons for this can only be speculated about, but it is not unreasonable to imagine that it has something to do with the fact that The Watermelon Woman was the first feature film made by a Black lesbian.
Cheryl Dunye’s work on The Watermelon Woman was inspired by her research on the ways in which Black female actors have been marginalised and even erased in American cinema history. Amongst the film’s dedicatees are Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen, both famous and famously oppressed performers; along with other Black members of the cast, neither was allowed to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind or included on the version of the film’s poster used in the South.
Dunye’s film is a love letter to these actors and a reclamation of their lost or suppressed histories. However, when Dunye came to work on the film, she could not afford the rights for use of genuine archive material of their work. The director’s ingenious solution ultimately made it a more fascinating, more brilliant film. Fae Richards, the eponymous Watermelon Woman, is entirely fictional. The exquisite series of film clips and still photographs which document the decades-long career of Richards are artefacts manufactured in the mid-1980s by Dunye and photographer Zoe Leonard.
In its use of original film clips and photographs, The Watermelon Woman articulates a bold, provocative and gorgeous political point: for those excluded from significant chapters of history, including both people of colour and LGBT+ people, history must be written. Even as Black lesbian film star Fae Richards is fictional, she is also a vehicle for a crucial truth. Less than thirty years after the film’s release, Donald Trump has passed two executive orders which will remove funding from any museum which dedicates itself to telling Black and queer histories; the White House refers to such activities as promoting ‘anti-American ideology’. The Watermelon Woman is a reminder of the importance of creating and telling and celebrating histories which are written in a spirit of inclusivity and care, even when the precise facts have been lost in a fog of official prejudice.
As well as a beautiful and profound statement on true stories, The Watermelon Woman is also funny, sexy, playful, silly, romantic, with a knockout soundtrack. In step with all those qualities – as well as its radical and insistent belief in inclusion – LOCO presents the film in a relaxed screening. We hope that this way the film can be funny and inspiring to a wider audience than ever.
1996
Written and directed by Cheryl Dunye
Cheryl Dunye (Cheryl)
Guinevere Turner (Diana)
Valarie Walker (Tamara)
Lisa Marie Bronson (Fae Richards)
Cheryl Clarke (June Walker)
Irene Dunye (herself)
Alexandra Juhasz (Martha Page)
Camille Paglia (herself)