'Kokomo City,' a film about trans sex workers, marks one woman's return to the arts

In the new documentary “Kokomo City,” filmmaker D. Smith takes an unflinching look at the lives of four Black transgender sex workers living in New York City and Atlanta. Relying on her own aesthetic sense rather than filmmaking conventions, the first-time feature director intersperses shots of the four women performing everyday, ordinary rituals with dreamy recreations, scenes of city life, dance sequences and even illustration — all shot in dramatic black and white. But the film’s most compelling moments are the candid conversations an off-camera Smith has with her subjects about the joys and struggles of life as a trans woman and the humors and very real dangers of sex work.

“This is survival work. This is risky s---. This is putting your life in the hands of a man that don’t know s--- about you,” Daniella Carter, one of the film’s subjects, says in a scene in which she’s interviewed in the tub.

It’s one of the many moments in the 73-minute film in which the women hold court on their beds and couches or in other intimate settings in their homes. As the film progresses, these conversations evolve from light-hearted storytelling to more sobering accounts of violence and loss. But the common refrain is that making it out of sex work, much less making it out alive, as a transgender woman is beating the odds — a point that was made all too clear in April, when news broke that one of the film’s subjects, Koko Da Doll, also known as Rasheeda Williams, had been shot and killed in Atlanta.

“Losing her made this so much more real and urgent than it was before. It just proves why we had to do the film,” Smith told NBC News of the tragedy, which occurred just a few months after the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

The loss of its star is the most heartbreaking twist in a difficult journey for the documentary, which despite its own odds of success as a low-budget film has had an enthusiastic critical reception and picked up major awards at both Sundance and this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

When she began making “Kokomo City,” Smith — a Grammy-nominated producer, singer and songwriter — had been without a place to live for years after losing her music career in the wake of coming out as a transgender woman in 2014, according to her account. After deciding to pivot into filmmaking and pursue the documentary, Smith said she was turned down by all of the directors she approached. So she bought a camera and began filming Carter and Dominique Silver in New York, where she had initially intended to set the entire project. But the pandemic and the difficulty of the years leading up to it eventually forced her to abandon the city and head South to continue her project.

“I’d been homeless for years, because I was ousted from the music industry for coming out. At the tail end of that, it was very difficult in New York for me,” Smith said. “My plan was to just film everyone in New York, because I didn’t have the means to travel. But I had to leave.”

On the way to live with her sister in Miami, Smith made a pit stop in Atlanta, where a friend told her about Koko Da Doll, who was a sex worker in the city. So the director once again pivoted, recruiting Doll and Liyah Mitchell to the project to round out her central cast. In the end, Smith said, it worked out to her advantage, as she was able to shine a light on just how common the women’s experiences were regardless of their location.

Whether in the North or South, each one was living on the fringes of the Black community, shunned publicly by the men who sought them out privately and subjected to the ever-present threat of what the director calls “admissible violence.”

“Even though they’re sharing the same experiences, they’re in a different place, and they’re still dealing with the same type of men,” Smith said of the film’s four compelling stars.

“Kokomo City” represents a kind of artistic reinvention for Smith, whose need for a creative outlet becomes apparent within a few moments of speaking to her.

“I wanted to make something ‘filmic’ and artistic, number one,” Smith said, referring to a style of filmmaking that leans toward the cinematic. “This story is about Black people — trans women and Black men and the community thereof. But I wanted to do that in a different way, a creative way.”

Although the film has earned comparisons to Jennie Livingston’s groundbreaking but controversial 1990 documentary, “Paris Is Burning,” its similarities are largely limited to subject matter and the approach to interviewing subjects in the comfort of their homes. Unlike Livingston, a cisgender white woman, Smith’s own experiences inform her approach to her subjects — and the types of conversations and portrayals that she dares to tackle. And from aesthetics to form, “Kokomo City” is anything but a typical participatory documentary.

With Luc Allieres’ “Tango Bolero” playing in the background, the documentary opens with Mitchell relaying a story about an altercation with a client who had a “big a– pistol,” which ultimately ended in a detente. And in between shots of the Georgia native laying on the bed next to a giant teddy bear, the documentary cuts to an abstract reenactment of the scene and occasionally shows an illustrated, spinning gun in split screen — announcing Smith’s irreverent, eclectic style from the onset.

As the film progresses from this opening sequence, Smith splices in scenes of Black subjects in motion — dancing ballet, laying down in the grass and dribbling a basketball, among other things — in between the interviews with her four central subjects and a handful of male allies. There’s also the occasional recreation of the women’s sexual encounters, as well as satiric portrayals of imagined clients, like a chiseled white man in a superhero mask and cape, being thrust from behind. And it’s all set to a masterfully mixed soundtrack that is a testament to Smith’s musical pedigree, featuring dance hits like Randy Crawford’s “Street Life,” deep-cut tracks like “Sissy Man Blues” (by the film’s namesake, Kokomo Arnold) and a selection of Smith’s own compositions.

Watching the film and seeing these many elements somehow cohesively combined, there’s the sense that Smith, who in person is both self-possessed and warm, is always in control. But, she said, the filmmaking process was very much a vulnerable experience. Not only was she sharing intimate spaces and deeply personal experiences with the four women, but she was also reliant on them to bring to life her vision, which she describes in her filmmaker statement as “a raw, edgy but rare look into the lives of black transgender women as they explore the dichotomy between the Black community and themselves.”

“Before I filmed them, I explained what I wanted to do creatively and what that process looked like, and they trusted me more than they would anyone else — but that doesn’t mean that they trusted me completely,” Smith said. 

Asking for a deep level of trust and collaboration wasn’t always easy, given the difficult circumstances Smith was filming under, she said.

“I was very vulnerable. I was going to their homes. They had places to live; I didn’t even have my own bedroom at the time. I was sleeping on a floor when I started ‘Kokomo City,’” Smith said. “So I had no choice but to be humble.”

Ultimately, Smith was able to convince the women to let her enter their private spaces and let go of some of the usual armor, like full makeup and hair — and even clothing, in the climactic and no doubt soon-to-be controversial final scene — in order to capture a stripped-down portrayal of their daily lives. And the result is a gritty and confronting depiction of brightly burning and too often brutal lives, rendered in a glamorous and befitting black-and-white palette.