Cheryl Dunye – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

SPOTLIGHT January 2026: Madame Toussaint, Tressie Souders, Maria P. Williams and Zora Neale Hurston

January 1, 2026January 18, 2026 Leslie Combemale Ava DuVernay, Black women filmmakers, Cheryl Dunye, jule dash, madame toussaint, maria p williams, nia dacosta, spotlight, zora neal thurston

The current political climate, systemic bias and gatekeeping in moviemaking impacts the industry’s entire workforce, but they hit Black women filmmakers hardest. Those who today are overcoming – count Nia DaCosta, Julie Dash, Cheryl Dunye, Ava Duvernay among them – can look back and thank the early 20th Century Black Women filmmakers whose work and careers pioneered the path to current successes. It’s important for film lovers and filmmakers to know film history, and to recognize artists who created the chronology. We SPOTLIGHT four Black Women filmmakers who are oft offed in the telling of cinema history. They must be remembered, honored, celebrated for their fearlessness, creativity, and determination. Their work deserves space in our brains and their names should be on the tips of our tongues, not sidelined or forgotten.

SPOTLIGHT

SPOTLIGHT June 2025: Cheryl Dunye, Iconic Queer Filmmaker

June 1, 2025June 4, 2025 Leslie Combemale Ava DuVernay, Cheryl Dunye, Dunyementary, Jingletown Films, Karina Hodoyán, leslie combemale, national film registry, Shaz Bennett, spotlight, the criterion collection, The Gilda Stories

It’s high time we created a SPOTLGHT feature on trailblazing female filmmaker Cheryl Dunye. Her 1996 feature film debut, The Watermelon Woman, made history as the first feature-length narrative written and directed by an out Black lesbian about Black lesbians. Along with classics like My Own Private Idaho and Paris is Burning, the film is considered a seminal work of the Queer New Wave movement. Dunye quite literally invented a film genre, the “Dunyementary,” a style of cinema in which the lines of documentary, fiction, and personal life are blurred together. Many films, projects on the small screen, and art videography have been inspired by her work over the years. These projects, that center queerness or Blackness or both, would otherwise not exist.