Prior to attending UCLA, Kate Gleason and Margaret Maloney started out their life trajectories in, respectively, upstate New York and western New Jersey.
Now, the pair have combined for a faraway feature documentary that celebrates the quirky Victorian-homes neighborhood of Oakwood. Located on the northeast side of Raleigh, North Carolina, Oakwood is known for its Christmas and Halloween celebrations, a "Samedi Gras" local parade complete with a chosen King Leonidas and Imperial Empress, a warm embrace of LGTBQ+ residents and more.
Running 91 minutes, There's Something About Oakwood - directed by Gleason and produced by Maloney - will premiere up the road in Durham on August 15th as part of the 2026 OUTSOUTH Queer Film Festival. Somewhat unusually, the soundtrack for the film, composed by local musician Liam Wallace, was released a full year ahead of the film's arrival.
'Our neighbor Maggie is pleased to announce tickets are available to the premiere of the Oakwood documentary,' neighborhood resident Steve Champeon wrote on Facebook. 'If you've ever been curious about what a weird little neighborhood Hesther Hesketh and I live in, here's your chance.'
To wit, Champeon went on to point out that a still photo from the film features a mutual friend, Susan Rose "Boo" Reynolds, for whom Champeon and his partner have for many years collected dead cicadas. The wings of those dead cicadas have in turn been transformed into jewelry by Reynolds for her homespun brand Bijousavvy.
Of course, it's not all wine, roses and cicada wings. Journalist Josh Reynolds, who got a sneak peek at the documentary, notes that the film includes some inherent and familiar contradictions. 'Oakwood is almost entirely white,' he wrote, 'a sad truth that is at least partially explainable by the legacy of forced segregation. On top of that, Oakwood houses are now so expensive that the longtime, pioneering residents [who helped save the area in the 1970s] and who helped make them attractive could not afford to buy any of them.'
While at UCLA, in the MFA program, Gleason was awarded a $30,000 production grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for her thesis film Spacey, about a female astronaut who appeals for some Mars mission funding on a reality TV show. Maloney, who studied business economics, accounting and English literature, also works as an artist.
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