The Stroll is an astute, wide ranging, and comprehensive oral history of a place and time in New York City that suffered great stigmatization and hardship, but also one that fostered a strong sense of community among those who lived through it.
“The Stroll” refers to a section of 14th street in the meatpacking district where large numbers of trans sex workers made their living. Co-director and interview conductor Kristen Lovell – working with fellow trans filmmaker Zackary Drucker (The Lady and the Dale) – was once the subject of a documentary about “the stroll,” and it motivated them to become a filmmaker. What emerges from their collaboration is a picture of a community that banded together against intolerance, sexual violence, homelessness, and any number of other social ills on the streets of New York City, until the complexion of the neighbourhood and culture around it killed the scene entirely.
It would be easy to focus on the downside of working “the stroll,” but Lovell and Drucker are more interested in the personal stories and experiences to be shared, and not all of them are drenched in sorrow and hardship. It was an environment that bred toughness in the heartiest of people. It was a tough life to be a trans sex worker, and it still very much is, with the film doing a wonderful job advocating that sex workers need to be included in the fight for queer rights and visibility. Thanks to her personally connections to a lot of the subjects, Lovell is able to get people to open up freely about motherly figures that would show newbies the ropes, how they all had to create their own forms of protection against cops, predators, and bad Johns, the queer encampments that popped up along dilapidated, unused piers, and the ways that 9/11 and gentrification helped to push sex workers out of the neighbourhood.
Sadly, many people who could speak eloquently about this chapter in history aren’t around to testify, and Lovell’s crusade to tell the story of The Stroll before it fades forever into memory is impassioned and timely, especially in its discussion of so-called “walking while trans” laws. The Stroll is a film about the very nature of community that genuinely feels like it was made as a community effort.
Friday, May 5, 2023 – 5:15 pm – Scotiabank 6
The Stroll will premiere on HBO later this year. It was originally screened at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
