In
her late thirties, she describes her current lifestyle as
“no girlfriend, no pets” and asked if we could change the
name of the award she received to “10 Hot and Amazing
Gay Women in Hollywood.”
The
honor was recently bestowed on the L.A.-based Toronto native
by POWER
UP (Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment
Reaching Up), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting
lesbian visibility and integration in entertainment and
all arts and media. Among other projects, the organization
boasts a filmmaking grant program.
Munroe
credits the agency with supporting her when she
made her short film Dani and Alice (2005) by helping
her with pesky details, such as permits and insurance.
She
says that her film is unusual in that it is not a comedy,
unlike the majority of lesbian films that are screened in
festivals, and adds that people are often surprised that
her film got made, particularly because of its violence.
It was really important to her “to honor women’s experiences
that are somewhat difficult to deal with” and “for black
women to see themselves represented on screen in a way that
isn’t token and is not fluffy.”
The
12-minute film captures the last five hours of the title
characters’ relationship, one that Munroe says is marked
by violence as much as it is by love: “It’s about love and
our abilities and inabilities to negotiate love with each
other as lesbians and as people.” She says it explores how
we invest beauty with a broader significance, and how our
inability to negotiate love is in opposition to that beauty.
“We idolizing that perfect couple,” she explains, “not recognizing
how within this beauty there can be an ugliness that flows
through in relationships.”
The
film stars four beauties: Yolonda Ross (Cheryl
Dunye’s Stranger Inside), Lisa Branch (appearances
on Law & Order and Rescue Me), Honey Labrador
(Queer Eye for the Straight Girl) and filmmaker-screenwriter-actor
Guinevere Turner (Go Fish, L Word). It is produced
by Effie T. Brown (But I’m a Cheerleader, Real Women
Have Curves).
Dani
and Alice--which marks Munroe’s directorial debut, and
began as a project for the Fox Searchlight Directors Lab,
which provided camera and lighting equipment--has been accepted
at roughly 60 film festivals.
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