Directed By Women: Kokomo City (2023)

By Andrea Thompson

Holiday breaks are wonderful for many reasons, but as I return for a new year after a self-imposed hiatus, one of the benefits I reaped is getting to view D. Smith’s remarkable documentary “Kokomo City” multiple times. In the constant hustle that is the life of a freelance writer, getting to really soak in and absorb a film has become something of a luxury in the age of content, AI, and ever present deadlines.

And there is so much to appreciate in “Kokomo City,” which follows the lives of four Black trans women, all of whom are or were engaged in sex work. Want to think, consider, and laugh out loud within the first five minutes? Then give this one a watch, because there’s a whole lot of ground to cover during the 73 minutes we spend getting to know these women.

This is the part where I tend to marvel at the fact that this is a filmmaker’s feature debut, but D. Smith had been working in the music world as a producer for years before she discovered a passion for filmmaking, an endeavor which was partly born out of necessity. Although she worked with household names in the early 2000s that included Lil Wayne and Ciara, among others, even winning a Grammy in 2009, she was “forced out of the music industry” (as Smith herself put it) once she came out as trans.

Finding herself broke, homeless, and somewhat adrift, “Kokomo City” isn’t just representative of a promising new direction, it’s something of a comeback, and the accolades have been pouring in. They damn well should be, since Smith makes good use of the access she was granted to each of these women’s lives, the kind it’s difficult to picture another filmmaker getting.

If Smith weren’t also Black and trans, would we have been privy to Smith’s own very individualistic take on the contemplative route, with the kind of intimate dialogue that includes everything from hair removal tips to discussion of class, race, and how such forces affect their ability to pay those bills while they’re lounging in bed or the bathtub?

Unlikely, since “Kokomo City” has, in many ways, an insider’s unblinking gaze of the world and topics it’s delving into. And although her previous career came to a painful end (for now at least), it seems to have been time well spent, with the doc’s gorgeous black and white aesthetic and stylistic flourishes giving it an edgy music video feel - the click of a gun, the sound of a roar as sexuality is discussed, and the killer use of music in general.

Those discussions about sexuality, complete with light reenactments and nudity, also come off as both naturalistic and raw, to use the most convenient cliche. But that rawness applies to other less flashy, but still arresting topics, namely the way all four women discuss their lives and how their identities affect not only their daily circumstances but those of their clients. These women are older - to use the more gentle euphemism about anything having to do with women in pop culture who’ve left their 20s behind - having successfully entered various phases of their 30s, and are thus savvy survivors; not only more aware of the bullshit but less likely to take it.

That bullshit manifests in film’s most constant thread: the vicious hypocrisy of the many ways men take advantage of and sometimes actively harm them, and how cis women are typically all too willing to let it happen, but are likewise unable to imagine their partners even being attracted to them. And all four of the film’s subjects, as well as the men who are willing to speak of that attraction, are willing to make some truly jaw-dropping statements about it.

Daniella Carter in KOKOMO CITY, courtesy ofMagnolia Pictures

As one member of the film’s central foursome Daniella Carter sums it up: “The only thing he there for is escaping his own goddamn reality. And you know what that reality is? Ten times better than the one he’s giving you.” With such statements - and plenty more where that came from - it would be easy to think that “Kokomo City” revels in self-seriousness, but like many a pop culture offering from those who are traditionally marginalized, humor and joy are the primary defense mechanisms when you generally don’t have access to more official protection.

What’s left unsaid may be even more telling. How did the men who are willing to talk about homophobia in the Black community and their own attraction and encounters with trans women come to meet Smith and the other women on-screen? As the women themselves speak of how often their typical customers conform to the stereotypical tough guy image, it’s indicative of a long history of gender and sexual fluidity in hip hop, a community that has only recently begun to grapple with its history of vicious homophobia.

It doesn’t prevent “Kokomo City” from earning every bit of the oft-used descriptor unflinching, and sadly that includes a frustratingly common ending for one of the most jaded of the women the documentary follows: Koko Da Doll, who was shot and killed in Atlanta, and to whom the film is dedicated. If another piece of art must end up being a tribute to a vibrant, resilient person whose life still ended far too soon, this one at least is also a beautiful, powerful testament to a community which finds itself under siege yet nevertheless refuses to define itself by its oppressors.

52 Films By Women: Growing Up Milwaukee (2020)

By Andrea Thompson

Full disclosure: I not only resided in Milwaukee for many years, Tyshun Wardlaw, the director of “Growing Up Milwaukee,” was also a 2020 Film Girl Film Festival juror. I don’t exactly promise to be objective in these columns, seeing how objectivity has been dead for years, but this one is going to be more personal than most.

When you’re making a film about a city with a zip code that has the highest incarceration rates for Black men in the country, the first task is to not only get behind the numbers, but beyond them. Do so and various factoids are so unnecessary as to become meaningless. Sure, there’s all the scientific data that tells of the biological toll of repeated exposure to violence, but such dry details are only necessary for those who’ve not only never seen anyone get shot, but could feasibly go years without seeing a gun that’s not on some sort of screen.

Milwaukee is that kind of city, and Tyshun Wardlaw wastes little time exploring just what Marquell, Tiana, and Brandon are up against in her documentary “Growing Up Milwaukee.” They may not meet on-screen, but three teenagers have a lot in common, having grown up in areas that routinely see the worst of what Milwaukee has to offer. 

The various community leaders don’t mince words either, whether they’re speaking directly to the camera or the kids they’re trying to help, laying out their options clearly enough. In the clip below, one makes his case while holding a funeral program in one hand and the Malcolm X’s autobiography in the other in a pretty stark message about what awaits his young listeners if they don’t rewrite the narrative that’s been laid out for them, both from the neighborhood itself or the outside forces that routinely depict them as misguided criminals at best, savages at worst.

But as “Growing Up Milwaukee” knows, simple choices aren’t always so simple. Wardlaw, a longtime Milwaukee resident herself, has clearly been doing the work for a long time. It shows in the ease with which she quietly records talks where participants grapple with abandonment, rape, and suicide as they struggle to navigate lives that seem to constantly lead them towards a fatal, predetermined end point. 

Perhaps that’s why “Growing Up Milwaukee” almost seems like a kind of guide for finding the way back from trauma, with discussions about building trust back with family and friends at times feeling like detours with a somewhat lack of follow through. You always respect the goal though, which is to humanize her subjects rather than transform them into objects of pity or disdain. 

And we feel for them each time Marquell, Tiana, and Brandon fail to follow through on who they want to be so spectacularly. Progress is there, and more often found in the people around them who’ve arrived at a place of peace and stability, but Wardlaw isn’t interested in giving her audiences an easy uplift, as anyone familiar with her work or previous short film “Hummingbird: A Sister's Courage” can attest. But anyone uninitiated might be shocked at just how tenuous any real gain feels. It’s clear that the young people she follows have greatness in them, but just whether they’ll get the chance to fulfill that greatness is a constant question.

In other words? Just as there are no easy uplifting moments, there are no easy answers. But the conversation is necessary, and often overlooked due to Milwaukee’s proximity to Chicago, which is (rightly) called out for its racism and high murder rate far more often. But as a longtime resident of Milwaukee who now resides in Chicago, the very real segregation in the former tends to dwarf the latter, at least in my experience. It’s not that the system is any less racist in Chicago, it’s that Milwaukee lacks key elements of Chicago’s more redeeming features, such as a reliable and widespread public transportation system and a tradition of Democratic leadership. 

The result is that much of the worst elements of what America has to offer is magnified in a smaller environment that carefully insulates the privileged from their role in the suffering of those outside of the very deliberately, carefully constructed communities which are segregated not just by race, but class. If the city of Milwaukee hasn’t been held accountable as it should be, then a documentary like “Growing Up Milwaukee,” which not only explores the problem but is widely available on a major streaming service, is hopefully a sign of better things to come.

Growing Up Milwaukee is currently streaming on HBO Max.

52 Films By Women: Boys State (2020)

A24

By Andrea Thompson

Among the many fascinating things about “Boys State,” the documentary that recently debuted among Apple TV+, is that it’s basically a meditation on the state of modern masculinity that’s also co-directed by a woman. 

Every year since 1935, the American Legion runs a civics experiment called Boys State, wherein high school students spend a week building a government from the ground up. Assigned into random political parties, the boys then elect their own officials, with the position of Governor being the top spot. So what exactly does that look like in our current moment, when we’re grappling with how we define masculinity, femininity, and gender itself? Amanda McBaine and her creative partner/husband and co-director Jesse Moss decided to find out by filming what transpired in 2018.

Once you get over the simple fact that all these boys are gathered together free from worries about pandemics, social distancing, and masks, what emerges is a complex portrait that’s not so much about our future as our present. All of these young men are ambitious, driven, and serious about their political aspirations. And why not? Past participants have included politicians as wide-ranging as Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, and Cory Booker. High hopes are not unreasonable.

What happens in “Boys State” isn’t too surprising then, even at its most shocking. When those so eager to participate in the political system try to build their own, they’re not going to attempt to build something better than replicate what they’ve learned from us. It isn’t long before some very recognizable, wholly depressing patterns start to emerge, along with some political stars in the making, a few of whom will no doubt regret being so honest about what their adult counterparts smilingly justify and evade. And more than a few made me wonder if they were going to kill me when they grew up.

Ben Feinstein was bound to unsettle me from the moment he brought out his talking Reagan doll, and sure enough, he quickly became the architect behind some of the most vicious political attacks on his opponents, both of whom were young men of color. Others may be channeling Donald Trump in their emphasis on making their state/political position great again, but Feinstein is the one who quickly emerges as a far more masterful manipulator. He may be a more complex type, but losing both his legs at age three to meningitis hasn’t made him compassionate as firmly believing that individual failings are to blame for a disadvantaged position, race, gender, or any other factors be damned. He is the one who comes from a comfortable place, only to prevent others from achieving the same privileges.

A24

The real star that emerges is thankfully someone far different. Steven Garza’s cited inspirations may include the likes of Bernie Sanders, and far more surprisingly, Napoleon Bonaparte, but Obama is probably the leader that will spring to mind when he gives his first jaw-droppingly inspirational speech that leaves his competitors scared stiff and his fellow party members standing and cheering. His backstory is the stuff great biographies are made of. He’s the son of Mexican immigrants, with a mother who was undocumented for a time, and he’s also the first of his siblings to get past his freshman year of high school. And for all his openness about his left-leaning politics in a deeply conservative environment, his political instincts are sharp enough to leave his work as a gun control activist unmentioned until later in his campaign for Governor, the highest office available. 

Much like another, far less effective recent film about politics, “Boys State” has a clear scapegoat for the dysfunction - political parties, even kicking off with a dire warning from no less than George Washington about their unsettling effects on government. But while few would argue that our electoral system is in desperate need of change, political parties are not the primary motivators behind the documentary’s most heartbreaking, and at times shocking, moments. It is us. It’s always us

52 Films By Women: Represent (2020)

Music Box Films

By Andrea Thompson

“Represent” is an exception among the many political documentaries, which have become quite prolific recently. At their best, they tend to reveal unsettling truths, but not much food for thought, at least for the most part. There are exceptions of course, but that’s not entirely a bad thing. Our politics, which tended to comprise various shades of gray, haven’t so much polarized the way everyone believes. Rather, they’ve been stripped to reveal what we’ve become, and how we could deteriorate into something far worse if things continue to unravel.

But “Represent” doesn’t just show the common ground that exists between the various aspiring Midwestern politicians it follows, all of them women, it got me to do something I didn’t think was possible in our current climate: sympathize with a Republican running for office. The documentary could never have made me vote for her even if I could have, but I challenge the most ardent Democrat not to feel some compassion for Julie Cho, who decides to run for state representative in Evanston, a liberal suburb of Chicago.

Cho is certainly the most complex of the three women director Hillary Bachelder follows for her feature debut. Cho is in many ways the ultimate American success story - an immigrant who fled an oppressive country, in her case North Korea, and saw the best of America in the small town she and her family ended up in. Distrust of any state or national authority was already a given for Cho, who soon found herself drawn to the Republican party of the 80s, which advocated for small government.

It’s not that Bryn Bird and Myya Jones are less fascinating, they’re just on more predictable paths as Democrats. Bird is a farmer and happily married white mother of two small children who runs for township trustee in her small rural town of Granville, Ohio, and Jones is a 22-year-old Black woman who’s freshly graduated and decides to run for mayor of Detroit, then state representative when her mayoral bid fails.

Bachelder doesn’t need to do much to convey just how much gender plays into all three campaigns, or how much more Jones has to shoulder as a Black woman, a demographic which is the backbone of the Democratic voting block, but doesn’t seem to get much support once they decide to put themselves front and center. 

Not that Cho or Bird have it easy. Cho, who makes gerrymandering and the effect it has on suppressing minority votes the central issue of her platform, doesn’t just encounter open scorn, and even threats of violence when she goes out campaigning, but a complete lack of support from her own party. They become so bent on silencing her they pressure her to drop out, and in one case a top official outright hangs up on her during a phone call. There’s also numerous other macro and microaggressions, including some casual racism at a Republican luncheon.

Bird has her own issues. Her area is heavily Republican and never had a progressive candidate representing them. The trustee board also consists of a very entrenched old boys network who constantly undermine the only (also Republican) woman in the room, whom Bird is angling to replace. So Bird has an uphill fight of her own, even if she does manage to convince quite a few others to get involved in political campaigning for the first time.

Under such circumstances, it can often be difficult to not define subjects by their worst experiences, and Bachelder avoids this by revealing some of their biggest obstacles during the latter half of “Represent,” which include Cho’s past cancer diagnosis, Bird’s mother passing away, and Jones recouting her childhood sexual abuse.

Music Box Films

The fly-on-the-wall approach doesn’t always prove to be the best, given that some of the more minute aspects of their political journeys fall through the cracks. But it just might be a fitting angle for the mostly non-flashy style of campaigning all three candidates embrace. That Myya, who has all the characteristics of a political star on the rise, doesn’t overwhelm the others with her dynamic, intensely charismatic presence that’s a natural fit for the social media she embraces (and eventually includes a viral rap video), is especially impressive, reflecting Bachelder’s commitment to give equal weight to all of her subjects.

The doc is also curiously reluctant to embrace its influences. That “Represent,” which takes place over the course of 2017-8, was partially inspired by the influx of women in politics in 2016 is evident. But as the doc points out in its opening, there have been many cases when the number of female politicians have suddenly seemed to increase. If it’s treated as a lark each time, then the timing of the film’s release, which coincides with Biden’s pick of Kamala Harris as his VP, is impeccable. Who knows? Maybe the normalization of women in office could arrive sooner than any of us would have allowed.

52 Films By Women: Circus of Books (2019)

IMDB

By Andrea Thompson

Are the filmmakers behind “Circus of Books” here to give us what we need or what we want? Well, it depends on your definition of both. Subversive is an overused term, but part of what makes the Netflix documentary so damn enjoyable isn't just how it does indeed subvert our expectations, but how much sheer delight director Rachel Mason takes in it.

Not all of the enjoyment is intentional; certain family dynamics can only come through lived experience. Objectivity has been dead for a while, but it was still an incredibly wise decision on Mason's part not to distance herself from the fact that she's making a movie about her own family. “Circus of Books” is and remains a family affair, and Mason allows those aforementioned family dynamics to shine as she makes an incredibly personal vision of her own, often while examining how the term family itself was hijacked in the name of conservatism. Or more accurately, a conservative crusade that would only accept one definition of family and sought to remake the world in that image.

Karen and Barry Mason violated that definition by the nature of their work, even as they upheld the image of a close-knit, conventional life in the midst of secular, liberal West Hollywood. They were careful to keep their work life hidden, not just from their children, but everyone. This commitment to secrecy was so extensive that when Karen asks them to explain what their store, the titular Circus of Books, actually was, Karen and Barry look at each other in that uncomfortable way parents often do whenever they're forced to discuss anything related to sex. And why not? The store that they ran didn't just sell sex, it sold porn, and was actually the largest distributor of gay porn in the United States.

IMDB

Their paranoia was probably justified. The word porn alone is enough to send people scrambling for their pearls even today, but adding the word gay most likely would have sent the Masons' neighbors screaming in the other direction back in the 70s and 80s, and most likely well into the 90s, since Karen and Barry ran the store together for about 30 years. As magazine publisher Billy Miller puts it in the film, “To be a homo was unspeakable, basically.” In such a time, when even mentioning homosexuality was considered disgusting, the Circus of Books was a safe place, the center of the gay universe, where the men (and this was very much a business that catered to male tastes) could see other gay men “naked and unafraid,” and feel free to openly connect with each other. In some cases, they were very open, with the alley behind the store quickly becoming known as Vaseline Alley.

So how did a nice Jewish couple who regularly went to synagogue get into this? Like some of the best things start, mostly by accident. They needed to order a living, saw an ad in the paper from Hustlers publisher Larry Flynt, who was looking for magazine distributors, and jumped on it. From day one, the cash started flowing in, and the two quickly set up the business that would end up sending their kids to college. It was also a life that was strictly segregated, even from themselves, since Barry and Karen apparently never even watched the videos they sold, and in some cases, made themselves, albeit through others. To them it was a job, and to this day their employees speak highly of their honesty and trustworthiness, very rare qualities in themselves, but all the more so in the adult industry.

Even if “Circus of Books” doesn't directly address it, the Masons became bigamists in a sense, with a newfound family on the side as well, even if it was more of a response to the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. The Masons were often a source of support, even acting as surrogate parents in cases where biological parents refused to visit their dying child. Such attitudes didn't have to look too far for justification, given that it was upheld in the highest levels of government. Rather that funding treatments, the Reagan administration threw its money into a task force dedicated to arresting those who sold explicit materials. That the Masons would be swept up in it was feasible, and soon became a reality when Barry was arrested and charged. But the culture of silence and shame remained strong, with even the couple's children remaining ignorant of their father's imprisonment. Things only resolved happily because Clinton was elected, and suddenly, not only were the prosecutors switched, there were a whole new set of priorities that didn't involve controlling people's viewing and sexual habits.

IMDB

In the end, it wasn't their business that did the most damage to the family, but the culture of silence and shame they'd enabled. When Rachel's brother Josh came out as gay, Karen was so unprepared she initially believed god was punishing her for her work, and had to come to terms with what she'd absorbed from her conservative upbringing. Even if she worked with and was fine gay people, she felt the need to justify what she did as being for her family, and that meant she was unprepared for anyone in it being gay. Her decision to make the commitment to not just examine her beliefs, but join PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) and become an activist are some of the most touching moments in the film, especially since older people are often depicted as frozen in time.

Karen embarking on a new stage in her life is also thoughtfully juxtaposed with the decision to finally close the store. The reasons why the business model it was based on is no longer economically feasible hardly need to be stated, but even if its heyday is long past, the lights going off for the last time at the Circus of Books feels like a tribute. The past may be gone, but everyone involved in the doc, whether behind the camera or in front, seems ready to embrace and ensure a future many wish to prevent.