Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye kicks off 2026-27 Dialogue With The Dean Series

Take for instance her creative destiny: The child of a Liberian father and an African American, more specifically “Philly,” mother, “I lived at the margins of both those cultures,” she said. “A lot of people take away anger from those experiences…I took away humor and wanting to perform it differently. And that’s why I carried on to my lens, my art, my craft.”

And her medium of choice: As a child “I was fascinated with photography.”

And even her sexuality: “I was always out, I was never in. I only ‘came out’ of my mother’s body,” she said to laughs.

And with energy, heart, and a will to make her art happen no matter what, the writer-director-producer did just that, and has been doing it steadily and successfully for the last three decades, as she told a delighted audience at the academic year’s first Dialogue With The Dean, which took place at the Virginia Wadsworth Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts and Media Arts in Chicago on October 17.

During the 90-minute conversation with School of Communication Dean E. Patrick Johnson, Dunye shared tales of her Philadelphia roots, her filmmaking philosophy, and the film that launched her career, The Watermelon Woman, which was the first feature film directed by a Black Lesbian and the centerpiece of a daylong symposium preceding the dialogue that was cosponsored by SoC and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In addition to her films, Dunye has directed episodes for a number of hit television shows, including Lovecraft Country, Bridgerton, Hunting Wives, Dear White People, Claws, and more.

“It’s trouble; they don’t want you to be an independent in television,” she said of the experience. “They don’t want you to do anything but call ‘action.’”

Despite television’s challenges, she knows her value. “Casts love me because I’m fun. I keep the energy up.”

Watch Dunye keep the energy, and laughs, up in the full interview.