LGBTQ&A, A-CAST -- Cheryl Dunye is a pioneering queer filmmaker. On this podcast, she talks about the enduring legacy of her film, The Watermelon Woman (celebrating its 20th anniversary), and directing sex scenes with brown bodies, why she’s no longer interested in making the compromises necessary to be a commercial filmmaker. She also talks about supporting more films by and about queer people of color and the significance of undocumented queer history.
“I teach at San Francisco State, and I’m amazed that more and more students are finding out that I’m there, graduate students as well as undergrads,” Dunye says. “And they're coming to learn how to break the form, break this monster that we call storytelling. That we believe. Because that’s the only way that we're going to make these changes right now, if we see things told differently, if the writers are not writing the same white bodies that are ‘queer-ish,’ or straight bodies that are pretending to be queer.
“We need to change it on the page all the way to behind the camera and in front of the camera.”