Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American lesbian filmmaker who directed The Watermelon Woman (1996), the first feature film directed by an out Black lesbian — a landmark of New Queer Cinema that invented a fictional Black lesbian actress from the 1930s to explore the erasure of Black queer women from film history, and won the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival. Her prison drama Stranger Inside (2001), centered on queer relationships among incarcerated Black women, earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Director, and her other films include The Owls (2010) and Mommy Is Coming (2012). Dunye has since become a prolific television director on series including Queen Sugar (2016), Dear White People (2017), Lovecraft Country (2020), and Bridgerton (2020). Her work sits at the intersection of race, sexuality, and the politics of representation, and her signature blend of fiction and documentary has been dubbed the 'Dunyementary.'