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After the San Francisco International Film Festival premiere of her powerful second feature, "Stranger Inside" director Cheryl Dunye matter-of-factly explained to the audience, "Some filmmakers are trying to make money. I'm trying to make cinema. I want awards."

Dunye certainly wins my award for best women's prison drama, even topping the grandmother of them all, the 1950 Warner Bros. classic "Caged."

Working within the conventions of the genre, Dunye manages to create suspense, surprises and pathos; gets great performances from her mostly unknown cast; and keeps the pace of the film moving confidently forward toward the film's ambiguous ending. Dunye has brought to the screen a well-produced, fully realized drama that is a full-on and uncompromising story of African-American lesbians. Dunye masterfully incorporates cinema-verite sequences of an inmate group-therapy session to lend an additional layer of gritty realism to this story of a tough young butch, Treasure Lee (Yolonda Ross), and her search for her long-lost lifer mother.

The film opens with handsome Treasure dancing with her femme girlfriend in juvie. Treasure has just gotten herself transferred up to the maximum-security facility to try and track down her mother, Brownie (Davenia McFadden). On her arrival, Treasure is welcomed by her pal Shadow (LaTonya "T" Hagans), who warns her to be wary of Brownie. Brownie has built a chosen family of wife and daughters and quickly takes Treasure in, saying, "I got a feeling about you."

Treasure sets her eye on sweet femme Sugar, much to the annoyance of Sugar's current sweetie Kit (Rain Phoenix). Treasure navigates her new world with a combination of endearing naivete and excessive butch bravado.

A variety of racial tensions and racisms inform the film's atmosphere of violence and mistrust. The white Kit is ostracized by her Nazi racist cellmates for her alliance with the black inmates. Brownie disses Treasure's Asian roomate Mei, prompting Treasure to rise to her defense. And in one of the story's crucial breaking points, Brownie makes Kit beat up the Mexican women who have been interfering with her contraband racket.

The greatest thing about "Stranger Inside" (compared to your standard women's prison film) is that the characters' lesbianism is an integral and visible part of the story (not a sensational shameful subplot). Dunye's other supreme accomplishment here, the importance of which cannot be overstated, is that she has created a feature-film portrait of multifaceted, courageous, dignified African-American women. "Stranger Inside" is a must-see movie that transcends its made-for-cable origins and definitely warrants a theatrical release.

--Jenni Olson

Stranger Inside
		90 minutes, color 35mm, English
		Lesbian/Co-gender, Drama
		Subjects: Family Issues, Black Images
		Distributor/Studio: HBO Films
	$14.95  $14.95