Triangle Filmmaker Spotlights LGBTQ subculture

July 25, 2012 - PRLog -- In August 2012, M.I., A Different Kind of Girl, a new documentary film about a little known LGBTQ sub-culture will be showcased for three-consecutive days as a part of the North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, shining a light on the talents of an emerging Triangle area filmmaker, Leslie Cunningham.

In M.I., Cunningham and her partner, co-producer Alana Jones, enter the world of new millennium drag and pick up the torch ignited by films like Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning to investigate attitudes in their own LGBT and African-American communities about women in drag. In the process, they uncover powerful ideas about female gender identity and sexuality in not only the mainstream popular culture but also within the marginalized LGBT and African American communities.

For nearly a decade, Cunningham has produced entertainment and arts media in the Triangle as the creator and director of TRIBES Entertainment (tribesentertainment.com). Under the auspices of TRIBES, Cunningham produced a number of shows for the Friday evening public access television broadcast covering arts and LGBT community events including the first annual Triangle Black Pride Festival in 2008 and Out Raleigh in 2011. The show, TRIBES Live, was a public broadcasting hit and spread the TRIBES banner and Cunningham's reputation as a local media institution to citizens around the Triangle for several years.

Cunningham is also publisher of the wildly popular indie publication, TRIBES Magazine (www.tribesmagazine.com), covering arts and entertainment in the Triangle and independent A&E in sister locales around the globe. Recognized and awarded for its coverage of poetry, beloved for its support of local artists, and tending to focus on the activist arts and creative media that generate progressive communities, TRIBES magazine has developed a reputation of love and respect among the poets, hip hop artists, music journalists, and indie music fans that have appeared on its pages and enjoyed TRIBES for nearly eight years.

While Cunningham spearheaded developments at TRIBES, moved on by her commitment to continue to serve her local arts community, she recognized a void in her own creative pursuits and committed herself to discovering her true hearts passion. Cunningham realized she wanted to make documentary films and immediately took steps to pursue her new craft. While she continued to volunteer and produce short film for local public television, Cunningham enrolled in documentary film courses at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. At the CDS, her mission became clear and Cunningham left her day-job in marketing to pursue feature documentary filmmaking full-time. The move was bold and Cunningham shared triumphs and failures of the process with her arts community, her friends, and her LGBT family here in the Triangle who have come to look to Cunningham for the inspiration to dare to follow a dream.

While she has been on this journey for sometime, 2012 marks a major milestone for Cunningham's burgeoning career in film. The early years of filmmaking were a learning process from which Cunningham's first feature-length documentary film, M.I., A Different Kind of Girl, was born.

"I believe that we uncovered some powerful and fundamental ideas about life and identity that we hope will challenge viewers thinking about women, in general, and specifically, on drag stages reaching beyond the borders of the LGBTQ community," says Cunningham.

A TRIBES Entertainment Film, M.I. debuted this past March at the Hayti Heritage Film Festival in Durham, NC, one of the longest running film festivals in the country, and the film is now on a 2012 Pride Festival tour and has screened in cities including Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Raleigh at the annual Triangle Black Pride Festival. Officially selected to be screened for three consecutive days at downtown Durham's historic Carolina Theatre as a part of the 2012 North Carolina Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (8/10 7:10pm | 8/11@1:15pm | 8/12@1pm), M.I. and Cunningham are on their way.

WATCH THE TRAILER NOW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u92NxKwlLl4&feature=player...



To learn more about the M.I. film, please visit http://www.tribesentertainment.com or email info@maleillusionistthefilm.com.