Cheryl Dunye’s queer cult work of autofiction has become a landmark of American indies—and won the Teddy Award for Best Feature at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival. Dunye herself steps into the role of Cheryl, a young Black filmmaker who spends her days working in a video store. Following Cheryl’s dating life and her aspirations to make a film about a 1930s actress, both of which prove comically hard to navigate, The Watermelon Woman flirts with Jacques Derrida’s concept of “archive fever” as Cheryl’s obsession with her project produces a new lease on her own identity and her position within history as an art-making, Black, lesbian body.