The Independents: We’re following a year in the life of 7 Sundance filmmakers

(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Kristen Lovell has been determined to tell the story of the transgender sex workers of New York’s Meatpacking District for almost 20 years.

Directed by Lovell and Zackary Drucker, “The Stroll,” which refers to the area that trans sex workers would congregate, is a culmination of that resolve. The film, which is part of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. documentary competition, offers a glimpse into the history of the Meatpacking District primarily through archival footage and Lovell’s interviews with the people who worked there.

Lovell herself spent years working on the stroll. After moving to New York City as a teenager and losing her job as she began her transition, it was one of the only avenues available to her to survive. Her experiences were one of the first things she decided to document when she started taking a media training program for young people while still living in a youth shelter.

“The first time I picked up the camera, I was on the stroll,” Lovell said. “I was the only Black trans woman in our cohort of young people, so I would tell them about what was going on on 14th Street.”

Although this early footage was lost, Lovell continued to document her experiences with her own camera, which she bought with some of the funds she received after she aged out of the youth housing program. But, as she points out, it was aging out of the youth assistance programs that further necessitated she work the stroll; as a trans woman, traditional employment and other assistance were unavailable to her. She eventually started working at Sylvia’s Place, a nonprofit organization offering a safe space for trans youth.

Although they never officially crossed paths, Drucker was orbiting some of the same spaces as Lovell. Drucker, who grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., had moved to the city in 2001 and, she explains, “walked the Meatpacking District as a naive kid.” As a youth activist, she helped put up flyers for groups such as Fierce, an organization fighting gentrification that happened to be founded by some of Lovell’s youth media cohorts.

With a background in photography and art, Drucker broke into narrative television through the series “Transparent.” More recently, she directed and executive produced the docuseries “The Lady and the Dale.” “Until then, I’d been doing experimental film, video work, performance art — finding my identity as a trans person and as an artist and doing it all in an integrated way,” Drucker said. “I never thought I could have a legitimate career in any legitimate industry. But the art world always seemed like an expansive space of innovation. And that was the world that nurtured me into realizing myself as a filmmaker.”

Lovell, meanwhile, had continued to gather material while she worked in the nonprofit sector. Her brushes with media as one of the subjects of a documentary as well as an actor further convinced her that it was time to figure out how to make the jump to filmmaking to tell her own stories. An encounter with documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf led to an introduction to Drucker and their collaboration on this project.

Both Lovell and Drucker agree that it’s time trans storytelling moves away from teaching the basics to telling more complex, authentic stories.

“There were people that were actively trying to erase the sex worker narrative, but you cannot have authentic stories without trans sex workers,” Lovell said. “Whether it was your experience or other peoples’, it was still a part of the trans experience.” —Tracy Brown