Donna

Donna has its heart in the right place. But in the end, it felt just that bit too cliched, too reliant on tropes we have seen before, to excite me. Like, Donna Personna is a trans woman known both as a trans campaigner, and as a stage performer with the Cockettes.

It’s documentary and the narrative, proper, opens with Donna opens being offered the position of co-writer for a play based on the 1966 Compton Cafeteria Riots. These were the other riots.

Most folks have heard of Stonewall. Fewer, unless they were active in LGBT politics in the Seventie0s and Eighties, will know about Compton. Yet they sprang from the same dissatisfaction – police hammering down on LGBT people – and led to not dissimilar outcomes. There was an assertion of community rights and identity after, and a much more assertive activism.

In parallel with this narrative is a secondary one: Donna’s attempt to reconnect with her family who have no concept of her as Donna. Only her pre-transition self.

Perhaps I am being unfair. The Compton story is an important one, highlighting how queer liberation did not happen just the once in one single location. For me, however, far more interesting was her personal story. As the youngest of 13 children, she was bullied at home by a family that sensed rather than knew Donna was somehow 'other'. Understanding, at the age of 19 that the very fact of who she was could destroy the career and well-being of that family – her father was a Christian Minister - she left and made her way to San Francisco.

There she settled in LA’s Tenderloin District, discovered the Compton Café – and began performing with theatrical troupe the Cockettes. The rest, as they say, is history, here told though a series of encounters and vignettes as she works through the process of play-writing.

Interesting, touching are scenes in which Donna interacts with her niece. Because despite distance, both real and emotional, Donna remains protective of her family and her father. She doesn’t want people using her existence to point score against them. Also engaging are scenes where Donna is interacting with a much younger trans woman. Because, with age comes perspective…and Donna is very much now community elder, passing on her own experience to the next generation and – since she is 75 here – the one beyond.

It is competently done, in places very much worth watching. For that, I am grateful to documentary maker Jay Bedwani.

Still, for me, this film comes with moments of uneasiness, moments of longueur. Like, do we really need yet another film about a trans woman that opens on the infamous putting on the make-up scene. Elsewhere there is just that bit more of a focus on make-up and clothes and fashion than I was comfortable with.

Also, the fragmented nature of this film may give an impression of authenticity. Whereas I am left wondering, as I frequently am when I encounter this style, whether this reflects a certain abdication on the part of the director. “Look!” the message seems to be: “here is a buffet. Admire the wealth of dishes on display! But do not expect me to help you assemble them into a meaningful plate. That’s your job.”

Still, it remains a useful historical document, and many will find themselves learning from it.