As guest programmer Orla said, addressing a crowd of about 60 patrons gathered at Sun-Ray Cinema on the evening of June 18, 2026 to view this wonderful film, "a day without lesbians is a day without sunshine."
This film is a classic in the canon of gay cinema owing to its arch sense of humor and content so provocative it inspired a congressional investigation (lol). It's the movie that The Man doesn't want you to see!
Watermelon Woman holds the distinction of being the first major film to be made by a black lesbian. It made a big splash at TIFF when it was first released in 1995. The film follows the adventures of a fictional version of director Cheryl Dunye as she sleuths her way to uncover the identity of the eponymous Watermelon Woman, whose film performances have gone uncredited due to racist and misogynistic practices typical of Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s. As with any proper quest, it's the seeking and not the finding that matters; in her search Dunye takes the audience into what one imagines is the director's world, full of color and fun and cool people and daily struggle. Dunye tells a story that honors her community while also communicating some of her tension from living within it, at the intersection of being black and a woman and gay and working in a field that is quick both to discard her own contributions as well as to erase the contributions of her spiritual mothers. Preventing that erasure, along with staking a claim to territory of her own are the dual purposes of the film.
The film combines interesting photography with a quirky sense of humor that blends reality and film in a captivating way. Highly recommended.