Resumen

As part of my current doctoral research, in which I comparatively investigate the phenomenon of autofiction and its ramifications in lesbian narratives in literature and cinema, I intend to present in this paper an analysis of the feature film “Watermelon Woman” (1996), written, directed, and starred by Cheryl Dunye. The film is part of the New Queer Cinema movement, which emerged on the American scene in the 1990s, and is the first feature film directed by a black lesbian woman in the country. In addition to this historical fact about the genesis of the work, it is also groundbreaking and innovative in its use of cinematographic techniques to bring to the screen an autofiction that plays with the documentary genre. In it, we follow the journey of the protagonist, a film student also named Cheryl, which, in literature, is often referred to as an onomastic identification between author and narrator, who records her search for a film actress from the 1930s identified in the credits only as ‘watermelon woman.’ Thus, creating an abysmal structure, the feature film invites the viewer into a game of mirroring from which emerges an authorial self that is openly lesbian and black.