Cheryl Dunye

Cheryl Dunye (born May 13, 1966) is a film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress. Dunye is a lesbian and her work often concerns themes of race, sexuality and gender, particularly issues relating to black lesbians.

Dunye was born in Liberia, and grew up in Philadelphia. Dunye has taught at the University of California Los Angeles, UC Riverside, Pitzer College, Claremont Graduate University, Pomona College, California Institute of the Arts, The New School of Social Research, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

She is currently an assistant professor at San Francisco State University and a mother of two children.

Film career

Dunye began her career with six short films which have been collected on DVD as The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye. Dunye's feature debut was The Watermelon Woman (1996), a film which explored the history of black women and lesbians in film.

The Watermelon Woman sparked controversy in 1997, through its funding by National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants. Rep. Pete Hoekstra wrote a letter to the NEA chairwoman, Jane Alexander, stating that The Watermelon Woman “is one of several gay- and lesbian-themed works cited by the Michigan Republican as evidence of "the serious possibility that taxpayer money is being used to fund the production and distribution of patently offensive and possibly pornographic movies."’ Because of this controversy the NEA restructured itself by awarding grants to specific projects, rather than giving funding straight to arts groups for dispersion.