Kokomo City

Morning routines and conversations in bed, gossip and real talk. In encounters and interviews, D. Smith portrays four Black trans* sex workers in New York and Georgia. The protagonists talk about their lives in an unembellished and lustful way. The result is profound and passionate conversations about socio-political and social realities as well as sharp analyses and reflections on belonging and identity within the Black community and beyond. In haunting black-and-white images and with a carefully chosen soundtrack, stagings and re-stagings, performative interventions and associative collages of biographical set pieces organically come together. Dreams and memories, battles fought and crises overcome are openly thematised without leaving out precariousness and experiences of violence. The protagonists share their experiences in relationships with lovers, friends and families, which are characterised by taboos, fetishisation, but also by their own desires. This lively portrait gives unfiltered space to their resistant narratives and undermines white, cis-heteronormative assumptions and stigmatisation.