The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye

In an accompanying director's statement, Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman) introduces these diary-like shorts as “a portrait of a young black lesbian artist in Philly during the 1980s and 1990s.” Stylistically, her first-person narratives are fairly rudimentary, but she does offer an underrepresented perspective, emphasizing the personal over the political. Dunye appears in five of the six films; sometimes as herself, sometimes as other characters, such as Shae Clarke in 1991's She Don't Fade. Her earliest shorts feature the legend, “A video by Cheryl Dunye,” while the last entry in the collection, Greetings from Africa, was shot on film. The Potluck and the Passion (1993) offers the most complex storyline, as Dunye intercuts interviews with the actors about their characters with scenes from an anniversary dinner. Other shorts, like Vanilla Sex (1992) and An Untitled Portrait (1993), feel more like sketches or drafts in which Dunye uses the essay form to raise questions, leaving the audience to fill in the answers (if there are answers). Collectively, these works look at race, sexual orientation, family, and relationships. DVD extras include a 1997 interview with Dunye from the DVD compilation Lavender Limelight: Lesbians in Film, in which she discusses her NEA-funded first feature The Watermelon Woman and notes that her work mostly revolves around “what it means to be a black lesbian in a white lesbian world.” Recommended. (K. Fennessy)