Cheryl Dunye’s THE WATERMELON WOMAN at the REDCAT
Actress-filmmaker Cheryl Dunye and producer Alexandra Juhasz will be present at the REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles for a screening of Dunye’s 1996 feature The Watermelon Woman on Monday, May 11, at 8:30 pm. The film will be screened in Beta SP. A fundraiser for the restoration of The Watermelon Woman will be held earlier that day (6:00-7:30 pm) at the Phyllis Stein Art, also in downtown LA. (More information below.)
Called both a “saucy, daring, insidiously smart debut” (The Boston Phoenix) and "flotsam floating down a sewer" (Christian right-winger Jesse Helms) The Watermelon Woman is, according to the REDCAT press release, "the first-ever theatrical feature directed by an African American [actually born in Liberia] lesbian." The film tells the story of Cheryl (Dunye), who becomes fascinated with a fictitious 1930s actress and blues singer named Fae Richards—a character stuck in “Mammy” roles in movies directed by a Dorothy Arzner type.
The REDCAT release adds that "as part of the production, New York photographer Zoe Leonard shot cleverly constructed still images of Fae Richards and in the process (re)invented a history running counter to the invisibility of black women in early Hollywood and black lesbians in general."
The Watermelon Woman won the Berlin Film Festival’s Teddy Award (for films featuring gay/lesbian/etc. characters) and the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival’s best narrative feature award.
Also in the Watermelon Woman cast: Guinevere Turner, Valarie Walker, Lisa Marie Bronson, Camille Paglia, Sarah Schulman
The following mini-bios and fundraising information are from the REDCAT release:
Cheryl Dunye, a native of Liberia, holds an MFA from Rutgers University. Her first short was Wild Thing: A Poem by Sapphire (1989). Her debut feature, The Watermelon Woman was awarded the Teddy Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her second feature, HBO Films Stranger Inside (2001) garnered her an Independent Spirit award nomination for best director. Her third feature film, Miramax’s My Baby’s Daddy (2004) was a box office success. Her other works have premiered at film festivals and museums worldwide. Dunye served on the boards of Outfest, the DGA, and the IFP. She has been honored with a Community Vision Award from National Center for Lesbian Rights, a Creative Excellence Award from Women in Film and Television, and a Fusion Award from Outfest and was selected as one of the 2008 PowerUp Top Ten Women in Showbiz. http://www.cheryldunye.com/
Alexandra Juhasz, Professor of Media Studies, Pitzer College, teaches video production and film and video theory. She has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from NYU and has taught courses at NYU, Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, Claremont Graduate University, and Pitzer College. Juhasz has written multiple articles on feminist and AIDS documentary. Her current work is on and about YouTube and other more radical uses of digital media. She produced The Watermelon Woman, as well as nearly fifteen educational documentaries on feminist issues like teenage sexuality, AIDS, and sex education. She is the author of AIDS TV: Identity, Community and Alternative Video (1996), Women of Vision (2001) and F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing (2006, edited with Jess Lerner). www.aljean.wordpress.com
The quintessential lesbian icon, Guinevere Turner started her career in Rose Troche’s Go Fish (which she also co-wrote) (1994), and has appeared in a number of productions since, such as Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy (1997) and Dogma (1999), Tony Vitale’s Kiss Me, Guido (1997), Q. Allan Brocka’s Rick and Steve the Happiest Gay Couple in the World (1999), Jamie Babbit’s Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007), Angie Powers and Elizabeth Stark’s Little Mutinies (2008) and (as Gabby Deveaux) in four episodes of the L Word (2004-2009). A true Renaissance woman, she has also collaborated to a number of screenplays, including Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000) and The Notorious Bettie Page (2005), and written two episodes of The L Word. She has directed a series of short films: Spare Me (2001), Hummer (2003), Hung (2005), Quiet Please (2008) and Late (2008).
A multimedia artist who has worked in sculpture, installation, and film, Zoe Leonard first exhibited her photographs in 1979 and has since established photography as her principal artistic medium. She has exhibited at Documenta IX and XII (1992 and 2007) in two Whitney Biennials (1993 and 1997), the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Kunsthalle Basel and the Tate Modern in London, among others. In The Fae Richards Photo Archive (1993–96), created in collaboration with Cheryl Dunye, she stages an archival ruse through scripting, casting, staging, and performing the life of an imaginary black Hollywood actress and blues singer Fae Richards, whose accomplishments have supposedly disappeared into the pit of American cultural amnesia. In the seventy-eight images that comprise this work, we follow Richards’s carefully annotated story from the earliest images of her as a teenager in Philadelphia in the early 1920s, to her heyday as a screen ingenue in the 1930s and ’40s, to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, to the final image of her as an older woman in 1973.
Curated by Bérénice Reynaud and co-presented with Kristin Pepe/Outfest.
Funded in part with generous support from Wendy Keys and Donald Pels.
Fundraiser for the restoration of the print of The Watermelon Woman
6:00-7:30 pm
PHYLLIS STEIN ART in Downtown LA
207 West 5th Street, Los Angeles CA 90013
Shuttle service will be provided from REDCAT to the fundraiser and back.
The fundraiser will include a reception, a “Watermelon Woman” burlesque by Malaika Millions, and special guest appearances by members of the original Watermelon Woman cast and crew.
For fundraiser tickets and information contact 323-622-6012 or email cheryl@watermelon.phyllissteinart.com.
The Outfest Legacy Project applauds REDCAT’s commitment to showcase an exquisite range of diverse programming and is thrilled to co-present the first feature film directed by an African American lesbian, The Watermelon Woman. The Outfest Legacy Project, in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive, is the only program in the world exclusively devoted to saving and protecting LGBT film. We have established the largest publicly accessible collection of LGBT moving images in the world (over 10,000 items and growing). Beyond actively collecting LGBT film and video media for permanent conservation and preservation, the Legacy Project strives to fund the restoration of damaged films and videos to their original release quality. In addition, the Project conducts LGBT public education and extensive outreach to filmmakers, archivists and educator.
It seems hard to believe that The Watermelon Woman, made as recently as 1996, could be in imminent danger, but it is. In fact, many of the landmark LGBT films of the last 30 years are already at risk of fading away forever. While mainstream films are both collected by nonprofit archives and cared for by the commercial film industry itself, independent films are largely overlooked. Gay and lesbian independent films – including significant titles from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s – are in particular peril.
The images shown in The Watermelon Woman are crucial to helping people find the courage to accept themselves, love themselves and find the strength to be who they are. The Outfest Legacy Project is now the world’s primary steward of our community’s heritage in moving images, an awesome responsibility that we proudly share with REDCAT in this screening of The Watermelon Woman. We hope to raise awareness about film preservation and inspire discussion in our common fight against xenophobia and homophobia. – Kristin Pepe, Legacy Project Manager
For more information about the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation, please visit: http://www.outfest.org/legacy
REDCAT is located in downtown Los Angeles, corner of W. 2nd St. & S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets may be purchased by calling 213.237.2800 or at www.redcat.org or in person at our Box Office on the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets (30 minutes free parking w/ validation). Box Office Hours: Tue-Sat | noon–6 pm & two hours prior to curtain. $9 [students $7, CalArts $5]
Photos: Courtesy of Cheryl Dunye
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Tags: Cheryl Dunye, Dorothy Arzner, Film Preservation, Gay Interest, Guinevere Turner, Lesbian Interest, Los Angeles Screenings, Outfest, Outfest Legacy Project, REDCAT, The Watermelon Woman
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