San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Dykes, Camera, Action!
two children there. The family lives in the Fruitvale neighborhood. Used to multitasking, Dunye was making breakfast for her son while talking by phone about her filmmaking experience.
Q: How did you come to participate in “Dykes, Camera, Action!”?
A: I think the project is really important, and that is why I agreed to give my input. I hope there are many more documentaries about lesbian filmmaking that offer new eyes and a fresh perspective, and I hope new people get stimulated to make film because of these documentaries. Q: What are you up to these days? A: I was teaching at San Francisco State University in the school for cinema, but I am on leave for a year now to dig into my own personal filmmaking. I am about to leave for a retreat in Mexico to write an adaptation of a novel called “The Wonder of All Things” by Jason Mott, which I will then direct. It’s about a young black girl living in the South. After a plane crash where her friend is fatally wounded, she finds out she has an ability to heal.
Q: How did you come to get hired to do the adaptation?
A: I think communicating with students and having a family allows me to come to storytelling in a very expansive way. So I was able to use my knowledge of film history of black films and queer films and come up with the right hook that the people at Lionsgate wanted to hear from someone adapting this book.
I am working not only on an adaptation but also on an original film, “Black and Blue,” expanding a short film that I made. It is about life in the future and gentrification, as well as the impact of the tech world on the lives of people of color. We will shoot it in Oakland.
Q: You made “Watermelon Woman” more than 20 years ago. It sounds like it is easier now to get your films made then it was back then. Is this true?
A: It’s the same in the sense that funding is difficult to get. There is more support with the hashtag movement. But it has always been the same, at least in my life, the screaming for inclusion. That is what I did 20-plus years ago. Nobody is running at me today with tons of money, but I definitely feel people are looking at me differently as a part of the old guard. The environment of episodic television and other voices of cinema in Hollywood are looking to diversify. They have had luck with “Black Panther” and “Get Out” and “Moonlight.” But when I go to meetings in L.A., I still don’t see people in development who look like me. I have not seen a black lesbian executive. It is still white men and women controlling the gatekeeping.
contains interviews with filmmakers including Cheryl Dunye and screens at 4 p.m. Tuesday, June 19, at the Castro Theatre, part of the Frameline42 film festival. It will be followed by a free panel, “Queer Women Documentarians in the Spotlight,” also at the Castro, scheduled to start at 5 p.m.
For tickets and information: www. frameline.org
Q: How do you think about your future as a filmmaker?
A: I think about legacy. I think about letting go and not trying to be the oldest gay filmmaker. I think there are other people with stories to tell. I don’t need to take up all the space. I need to step back and guide the new blood. I like to think we liberated them to make films.
Q: How do you communicate this to your students?
A: On the first day of class, I tell them I wish them all success and that one day I am going to be coming into your office with a pitch. Be sure you give me a beverage of choice instead of just water.
Ruthe Stein is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior movie writer.
In the affectionate and intensely personal new documentary portrait of playwright-activist Terrence McNally, “Every Act of Life,” actor Micah Stock says of the prolific and socially groundbreaking writer, “People see his plays and they want to live more fully, more truthfully and joyfully.”
It’s hard to think of a better summation of the overall effect McNally’s plays have had on the American theater. The four-time Tony Award winner (“Master Class,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!” “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” “Ragtime”) has mixed wit and frank vulnerability in everything