The last six months of D. Smith’s life are a time she could never have envisioned. At the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, she premiered her debut film Kokomo City — a look at four transgender sex workers in New York and Atlanta — to rapturous reviews, the NEXT Audience and Innovator awards from the event and a quick pickup distribution deal from Magnolia Pictures.
Yet, as Smith has been gearing up for the film’s release — July 28 in select markets and August 4 locally — a harsh reminder of the realities many Black transgender women face hit home. One of the subjects of the film — Rasheeda Williams, aka Koko Da Doll — was murdered in Atlanta April 18. At the time of her death, Williams was the third transgender woman killed in the area this year, as anti-LGBTQ legislation spreads throughout the country.
A two-time Grammy nominee, Smith, who is a producer, singer and songwriter, has worked with artists such as CeeLo Green, Katy Perry, Andre 3000, Fantasia, Ciara and Billy Porter. She also appeared in the reality series Love & Hip Hop Atlanta and was the first trans woman to appear on a prime time unscripted TV show.
When she came out to her father as a teenager, she was kicked out of her Miami house and lived with a church member. Her career took off in Atlanta, however, after she produced “Shoot Me Down” for Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III album and subsequently began meeting virtually everyone in the industry — rappers, pop artists, even Britney Spears. “I really found my place in the music industry, and it was going pretty well,” she said.
Once she started to transition in 2014, though, all of those connections and opportunities dwindled very quickly: “I found myself on the brink of homelessness and was evicted.” Smith was in the city from the mid 2000s and left in 2017, moving to New York.
Her primary motivation in making Kokomo City was to create a film based around the transgender narrative that was creative, fun and felt refreshing — and wasn’t traumatic. She also just wanted to make a film that could draw people in. “It slowly started to sink in that this could become something, but, at the beginning, I just wanted to express myself and wanted to take this as far as I could go,” she said.
After reaching out to five different directors to ask if they would help her with filming the project and hearing them all say no, she took matters into her own hands. Smith bought a camera and lens and filmed and edited it all herself, sans assistance, all in black and white. She was eventually able to get Emmy award winner Lena Waithe onboard as an executive producer.
She met Kokomo City’s subjects largely through social media. Filming began in New York in 2020, before the pandemic happened, with some B-roll footage, followed by interviews with subjects Daniella Carter and Dominique Silver. When Smith lost the space she was staying in, she was forced to move to Miami but on the way stopped in Atlanta to conduct interviews with Decatur’s Liyah Mitchell, then Koko Da Doll, whom Smith met through a friend.
Among the four, she amassed what she calls some amazing footage of the women talking about their profession and day-to-day life . . . but realized she’d have to narrow it down at some point. “It was heart-wrenching deciding what to use and what not to. It was hard getting rid of some of the footage, some stunning quotes and visuals that did not flow with the film. It would have thrown some things off. I struggled. I wanted to work day and night but you have to take a break and come back and look at it objectively.”
Seeing the standing ovation that accompanied the Sundance premiere was almost surreal. In addition to the film getting distribution, she was also signed by CAA talent agency. “It stood out to me like — ‘Hello, bitch, you are doing something incredible. Wake the hell up.’ The experience at Sundance was literally life changing and gave me a second opportunity in life. Thank God for the people in the audience, real people saying ‘yes.’”
Smith found out about Williams’ death on social media just days before the film was scheduled for a second Atlanta festival gig. “I thought it was a joke, something mean and hateful that someone was doing,” Smith said. “By the second direct message that I got, I started to ask questions and called one of my producers and asked when was the last time someone had spoken to her. I didn’t get an answer. It was very tough.”
Williams grew up in the Southside College Park area. An aspiring musician, she had recorded the songs “Trick” and “Bulletproof” and wanted to create her own hair brand. She started her transition at 13. Smith remembers her as a fun person — a party animal but sweet and quiet. “She was so polite and country and Southern, things that would draw people to anyone.”
After Koko’s death, Smith feels more of a sense of urgency to get this film out. “I want to continue telling stories of how great trans and queer people are outside of the narrative we are having to give people. There is a very strong, vivid human side of us that we are not often able to show outside of the constraints of cliched roles that have to be over the top or traumatized. There is so much more to us than that, and I want to make sure that that continues.”
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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.
