Kokomo City
classified 18Please note: This was screened in Aug 2023
With this luminous, directorial debut, Grammy-nominated producer and singer-songwriter turned documentarian D. Smith opens a window into the lives of Black transgender women sex workers in America.
Shot in striking black and white, it presents the stories of four women in New York and Georgia speaking frankly and philosophically about their lives. Salty, incisive and unapologetic, the women share vital reflections on love and desire, sex work and safety, attitudes towards gender, and issues of belonging and identity within Black culture and society at large, offering up the hard-earned wisdom of people who have seen it all.
Kokomo City positions the women as the authors of their own lives, turning past moments of tragedy (and comedy) into exuberant art. Incorporating interviews and reconstructions, D. Smith’s innovative, cinematic, punchily sound-tracked documentary gives voice to these women and their beauty, joy and pain, delivering an irreverent, destigmatising and no-holds-barred portrait of lives that are rarely so fully explored on screen.