D. Smith’s Kokomo City, a documentary about Black transgender sex workers, opens with a story from Liyah, one of the film’s participants, about a client who came to see her, only for her to discover that he was carrying a gun. She wrestles the gun from him and forces him to leave her home before learning that he’s a well-known rapper in the Atlanta area carrying the weapon for protection. She immediately texts him back and asks him if he wants to come back over. And Liyah’s entire retelling is punctuated with quick cuts to recreations of the story – a choice that energizes the storytelling and enhances Liyah’s inherent humor.
This brilliant opening sets the tone of Kokomo City right at the start. This is a film that is playful and funny, frank and heartfelt. The four trans women who open their lives up for the film are refreshingly honest about their lives as trans sex workers. There’s no romanticization, but at no time does the film dip into trauma tourism either. Smith shows the mundane sides of these women’s lives, from putting on makeup and getting dressed to simply spending time with friends. But there is also so much joy captured by Smith’s stunning black-and-white cinematography. We see the film’s participants celebrating their communities, their romantic relationships, and the comfort they feel with themselves as they move through the world.
The film also explores transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny within the Black community through a series of interviews with Black men about their relationships with trans women. This provides Kokomo City with an important perspective, finding deep insecurity beneath layers of hatred and abuse. Daniella, one of the films participants, explains that the men she sleeps with are there to exploit trans women, to fetishize them. And the film never shies away from this exploitation and fetishization, the abuse or the danger that these women find themselves in through the course of their work. Some of the stories that the participants tell are harrowing, heartbreaking – but Smith is careful to never allow us to believe that the trauma and the pain is all there is to these women.
In the end, Kokomo City is vibrant, joyous, and fully alive – much like the women who participated in its making. Between the conversations with Black trans sex workers, the recreations of stories from the women, and the interviews with those on the periphery of the sex work, we’re left with an honest and frank portrait of the life these women lead – their struggles, but especially their hopes, dreams, and joys.
