1
"David France, an experienced and distinguished investigative reporter with a specific interest in issues relating to the LGBT community, turned to documentary filmmaking in 2012 with his first feature How To Survive a Plague. Welding together vast amounts of archive and research sources in a style France describes as “archival verité” to compile a visual history of the AIDS activism he’d been writing about since the earliest days of the crisis, his film provided a comprehensive, compelling document of the epidemic and those fighting for recognition and a response to it. A similar style is used in France’s latest film, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, another intensely researched and deeply felt portrait that tells a similarly fraught and complex story. Marsha, a prominent personality in New York’s emergent late 60s transgender community and a key figure in the Stonewall Rebellion, died in 1992 in mysterious circumstances. Working with Victoria Cruz, a member of New York City’s Anti-Violence Project, an organization dedicated to investigating violence against LGBT communities, Frances initiates a reverse investigation, delving through archive material and producing new research to retroactively attempt to both to uncover the truth of Marsha’s death and the nuance of the life that came before it."