\u27Sometimes You Have to Create Your Own History\u27 : The Watermelon Woman and Historiographical Theory

The independent film The Watermelon Woman (1996 ; dir. Cheryl Dunye) tells a feminist story of sexuality and history in film by enacting, presenting and explicitly discussing through its characters issues of race, gender, homosexuality and history. Composed in the verité style of a docudrama, the film features a young Afro-American lesbian as an aspiring documentary film maker and her research on an Afro-American actress from the 1930s. The film directly engages the audience in discussions regarding intersecting categories of marginalisation, as well as the silences and invisibilities produced in filmmaking and the history of film. Connecting these issues to older and contemproary developments in historiographical theory, this paper discusses not only what history means in and for film and identity politics, but also what this film signifies in turn for history writing as an academic discipline. While the film plot presents the audience with canonised methodologies of historical inquiry, it also comments on the relationship between history writing and creation/imagination, between facts and fiction and on the necessity of both