Freedom homes12/12/2023 ![]() ![]() It's bursting with energy, it's all over the place, and there are times when it sorta trips over its ambition. But it's hard to pinpoint, in some faux-objective sense, what does or doesn't "work" because it isn't trying to satisfy any criteria but its own. The whole thing is uncoupled from mainstream/"normie" life and bourgeois concepts of propriety, much like the New York- and Atlanta-based people it depicts. She was also homeless for a while. This movie is a reclamation, a reinvention, and a return. ![]() Smith was ostracized by the music industry after coming out in 2014 and appeared on season five of "Love & Hip-Hop: Atlanta," a gig that she now regrets because of how she tried to stand out by (she says) somewhat caricaturing herself. Smith, a Black, trans, Grammy-nominated producer who worked with Lil Wayne, Keri Hilson, and Katy Perry. The cheeky-blasé subtext is: If you don't like what we're doing, go watch a different movie. It focuses on four trans women, Koko Da Doll, Daniella Carter, Liyah Mitchell, and Dominique Silver, interviewing them in their own homes and ordinary public spaces-sometimes glammed up, but more often with little makeup. The black and white imagery links it to a rich mid-century tradition of American documentaries (typified by films like the Maysles Brothers' "Salesman" and Shirley Clarke's "Portrait of Jason") that focused on personalities and aimed for a fly-on-the-wall feeling. But the structure and editing have a punk rock midnight-movie energy, taking pride in flagrantly ignoring the (purely theoretical!) documentary filmmaking handbook of do's and don'ts. Imaginatively edited, sexually explicit, and filled with eloquent and often boisterous individuals of a sort who rarely get to claim a spotlight in documentaries, the trans sex worker portrait "Kokomo City" is a blast of creative freedom in an increasingly corporatized period of nonfiction filmmaking. ![]()
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