The Watermelon Woman

A film built around a piece of research. Cheryl works in a video shop and wants to be a director. She picks up a camera and starts filming her own life. Going through old films she sees a face. A Black woman plays in a production shot in the 1930s and her name does not appear in the credits; there is only a description. She decides to find out who she was. She goes to the library, writes to archives, talks to people, and a life emerges piece by piece. The woman's name is Fae Richards. She sang blues, played maids in Hollywood, saw her career blocked by racism, and was forgotten. She had a relationship as well. She was involved with a director, and that moves Cheryl's research somewhere personal. At the same time Cheryl's own life is running. A relationship with Diana begins and her closest friend hates it. From there the film weaves two narratives. Archive work on one side, a relationship cracking on the other. What the narrative is interested in is not the past but the gap: the film is not about failing to find the woman it is looking for but about no such record ever having been kept. An explanation comes at the end. There was no Fae Richards; the character is invented and the archive images were produced for the film itself. An artist made the photographs. That false archive of eighty-two images was later exhibited as a work in its own right. The film has a political story too. The production had received support from a state arts fund in America, and a congressman proposed that exactly that sum be cut from the fund's budget; the proposal failed but the argument changed the fund's rules. Cheryl Dunye, Guinevere Turner and Valarie Walker are in the cast. Cheryl Dunye wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes independent cinema, the mock documentary form, and arguments about film history. Who it is not for: anyone expecting technical quality; it was shot on a very low budget and the picture and sound reflect that.