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3

imagine if we lived in a world where black queer filmmakers got HBO deals and tv shows and opportunities to build their careers from their daring debut features! just imagine!

Review by Emily Housel ★★★★½

C.L.I.T.
Center for Lesbian Information and Technology

2

imagining a world where movie rental stores are a thing again & all the film twitter gays finally find their partners while browsing the shelves. bc in reality my pool is the two old white men shopping in the criterion section of a barnes & noble.

Review by eely 🌙 ★★★★ Liked

thank you cheryl for perfectly capturing the experience of spotting some random actor in an old movie and then watching their entire filmography and learning absolutely everything about them. I feel seen.

Review by Holli ★★★★ Liked

"i am a black lesbian filmmaker, who's just beginning, but i'm gonna say a lot more and have a lot more work to do."

cheryl dunye is a visionary! this was funny, smart, subversive, ambitious, and unapologetically lesbian. black female directors!!

8

"all you do since you don't have a girlfriend is watch those boring, old films" felt like such a personal attack

3

Funny and incisive. Big fan of the way Dunye uses differing but very defined lesbian characters to explore intersectional lesbianism. Didn’t expect the ending!

1

"it means hope, it means inspiration, it means possibility. it means history"

i could watch hours more of this. insightful and delightful

2

obsessed with the outfits and colour palette
very sad that i don’t work in a video store with other gay people in 1996

2

thank god for snow days! the quasi-documentary style really works for this as it balances dunye's fictionalized personal life with her quest to uncover the truth about a 1930s star known only as the "watermelon woman". obviously, this is a sweet, charming story about being a lesbian in the 90s (complete with iconique outfits!) but it's power is in the history it snatches away from the chokehold of white supremacy. structural oppression lurks in all facets of life. society will tell the stories of those in power and disregard the rest. cheryl dunye chooses to sit near the camera and tells her own.

Review by Sally Jane Black ★★★★★

A more slickly produced production would seem too melodramatic. It would seem staged. Instead, Dunye uses video and a casual, diaristic tone to convey authenticity, and it works--the first time I watched this, I was desperate to know if the subject of the film was a real person. Rewatching, what stands out are the quiet parallels and contradictions. The ways in which race and sexuality intersect change only slightly in the decades between Cheryl's era and Fae's. Relationships come and go, but hope lingers. The drama in between the history is a reflection of what we will never know of Fae's life; what we do get are the high points, notes about her career and hints about her loves. What…

Review by p e r s i a 🍒 ★★★★ Liked

I really really loved this! The occasionally terrible acting and the super low budget coupled with great humour and a very touching story at the centre of this film made it all the more charming and so so heartwarming. It’s incredible how realistic the story of Fae Richards seems - even though it’s fiction it still rings so true. Watching the first movie directed by a black, out lesbian was the perfect way to start pride month!