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Film screening & Get-together The Watermelon Woman

Queer loox: The queer-feminist film series in Luxembourg
© Cheryl Dunye

CovidCheck event:

A CovidCheck certificate (paper or digital version) must be presented to attend the event. This rule applies for everyone from 12 years + 2 months and above. Further information about our CovidCheck measures here.

In The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl, a fledgling Black lesbian filmmaker played by Dunye herself, sets out to make a documentary about Faith Richardson, a lost cinematic ancestor glimpsed in 1930s race films. 

Playfully switching between 16mm film and the glorious, radical and short-lived 1990s grainy videotape aesthetic, Dunye layers slices of everyday life with black-and-white archival bits about Faith.

The Watermelon Woman highlights the systemic erasure of Black, queer creative labour from both collective memory and the archive. It illustrates the importance of films in black culture as a site for representation and creative expression. By focusing on the obscurity of the Watermelon Woman’s mystery, the film also exposes the impact of the stereotypical roles assigned to Black actresses (in this case, the mammy’ figure). Historical and contemporary social issues such as bureaucracy, police violence, and racial profiling of Black youth are also discussed. However, it is refreshing to experience a film about the Black queer experience that does not centre on trauma and violence but exposes the subtle moments in which they appear.

The Watermelon Woman — Trailer
queer loox

queer loox is a queer-feminist film and event series in Luxembourg. Queer in a broad sense signifies a crossing of traditional identity categories and implies a critical engagement with the division between the normal’ and the social illegitimate’. The series presents a wide range of feature films, documentaries, video art, ethnographic films, etc. queer loox sees itself as a queer-feminist platform, a meeting-point for discussion, and also dancing.

Next events

Tue 08.02.22 >19:00
Double feature Monika Treut :
Gendernauts (1999) & Genderation (2021)

Tue 08.03.22 >19:00
Body: Politics
Experimental feminist short films (programme TBA)

Tue 05.04.22 >19:00
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
(2001, dir. John Cameron Mitchell)