Hollywood often stereotypes sex workers. Two new films present them in their own words.

When it comes to the performances Hollywood considers prestigious, sometimes enough to win an actor an Oscar, there are a few familiar stereotypes: a slave person, an anonymous “wife,” a murderer, a white savior. But actors’ respect for the role of sex workers is less often discussed.

Think Eartha Kitt in Anna Lucasta, Halle Berry in Jungle Fever, Ziyi Zhang in Memoirs of a Geisha, Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy and River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho “.

A dizzying montage of clips of these performances from the 2021 documentary Celluloid Bordello highlights these awards. In the film, released on Prime Video this month, director Juliana Piccillo highlights the fetishization, victimization and exploitative stereotypes that all too often appear in these on-screen narratives.

Most importantly, she does this by turning her camera on real sex workers, many of whom are queer, as she discusses how their work and their likenesses have been portrayed in Hollywood. And while many of these performances have merit, including Jane Fonda’s in “Klute,” “Celluloid Bordello” makes you wonder what makes these roles stick.

While there are certainly portrayals that portray agency or are more realistic — like Dolly Parton in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” and Mya Taylor in “Tangerine” — too often the characters are killed, drugged or just plain fantasy. .

This pattern is further complicated when we consider representations of queers and black prostitutes. There is often an immediate understanding that something traumatic brought them to this job, that they only do it until they are rescued by a man, or that they generally lack a morality of their own.

I rarely consider sex workers who do it because they want to and are good at it.

Each of the real-life sex workers, as well as sexuality and gender educators, interviewed in “Celluloid Bordello” says some version of this, lending credence to the voices that are so often left out of the conversation when we talk about what they look like. that. on display.

This reintroduction of sex workers into their own narratives is further propelled in “The Stroll” and “Kokomo City,” two new films premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

In the opening minutes of “The Stroll,” co-director and lead Kristen Lovell, a black trans ex-prostitute, explains her intent: She was once interviewed for a documentary that aired a shortened, edited version of her. story and she was not happy. “The Stroll,” his directorial debut with trans director Zackary Drucker, is his chance to course-correct.

(It’s hard not to think about it Controversy lingers over narrative ownership in ‘Paris is Burning’ when Lovell vaguely mentions a previous film she was involved with).

This is the perfect setup to tell a story that hasn’t been shared in a long time, or at least hasn’t been shared in a way that accurately represents the people in it, it seems. Although, to be clear, there is a very popular camera style that is immediately noticeable in “The Stroll”. Like “Celluloid Bordello”, it is not a film of great artistic value. But narratively speaking, it opens your eyes.

“The Stroll” tells the story of its namesake strip in New York City’s Meatpacking District, which now captivates a group of upper-class, white socialites and their families, but was once the office of many black and transgender prostitutes across the US.” the 90s”. .

Like many queer people of color at the time and still today, Lovell was fired from her position once she began transitioning. Faced with abundant discrimination in the labor market, she turned to sex work to make a living. It wasn’t long before she came across the Stroll, then an almost neglected part of the city, where prostitutes could find work and form their own community.

“The Stroll” tells the story of this area and the lives that frequented it. It is a commemoration of what was and what will never be – and we wonder at what cost.

Lovell personally interviews sex workers who, like her throughout the film, share what it was like to work there. Although many trans people of color found friendship and community in the early years, they also encountered an increase in police brutality and persistent calls to remove them from the space, first from angry neighbors and then from Mayor Rudy Giuliani .

The politician was determined to “clean up” New York City, which in part meant relocating many of the black and trans prostitutes who had thrived in the meatpacking district. “The Stroll” details their painful removal and the violence against them.

While Lovell and Drucker show compassion for the sex workers they interview, who talk about the need to be a “superhero” for day-to-day survival and even arm themselves if necessary, the filmmakers balance the story with the voices of former sex patients. . long time residents. They also include an interview with a photographer who documented the area at the time.

This creates a more complete story around the complexity of Stroll’s disappearance, also showing some texture in the filmmaking. “The Stroll” is as much a vindication of the voices that came before it as it is a historical record of New York — specifically, the long and persistent struggle for queer rights in the city and beyond.

The documentary goes on and on, sometimes losing focus, but it’s hard not to find the ending bittersweet when you think about all the lives lost, the battles won, and the sight of a warm embrace between prostitutes who remained friends. all this time.

There’s a diverse narrative, fully established among sex workers, that pulses through “Kokomo City,” directed by D. Smith, the Grammy-winning writer and producer of hits like Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III.” The director makes his big debut with a documentary as disarming as his black-and-white cinematography.

And it’s an equally simple premise, as four black and transgender prostitutes from New York and Georgia talk about themselves and the world around them, both inside and outside the black community, honestly, confidently and sometimes downright hilarious.

Unlike the talking-head approach of Lovell and Drucker in “The Stroll,” Smith meets his subjects exactly where they are. Like in a bathtub, covered in bubbles, with the cap on, or lying on the bed to blow the wind, or half-adjusting in the mirror before going out.

It puts everyone in a place where they can really get to the bottom of who they really are, directly confronting who you think they are. That means diving into their experiences at the intersection of being black, trans, and sex workers. No, she’s not trying to get your man, as they say. They don’t even want your man. It is a commercial transaction.

One describes her volatile relationship with her brother, and another is about her family basically kicking her out of the house. But that space of trauma and tragedy is not where “Kokomo City” is. Rather, Smith seems more interested in what’s bothering them today as they go about their work and find healthy romantic relationships along the way.

For example, they feel compelled to deal with scorn within the black community, especially from black women who ostracize them and accuse them of taking their men.

In the bathtub scene with Daniella Carterwhich seems to stretch for about 20 minutes, drops truth bombs about gender, sexual agency, and the cognitive dissonance of wanting a man to find more pleasure in another woman, for whom he pays, and blames her for to stay.

Another surprising moment in the film has two prostitutes sitting at a table, one with dark brown skin and the other with light skin, talking about how they are perceived differently in the world. They speak candidly about colorism, how trans identity is viewed, and how others too often associate it with sexuality.

“Kokomo Town” is one of those provocative conversations you don’t often see in movies these days, in a society so governed by ever-changing rules about what can and can’t be said out loud, especially when it’s about the black community. Smith abandons all fiction.

Surprisingly, he wasn’t even going to direct the film. But after five other directors turned him down, he accepted it as his own. And it was worth it, showing a lot of promise for a debutant director with one goal: honesty.

“I wanted to hear something unchanging,” he writes in Kokomo City’s press releases. “Something similar to my actual experience. Something we can all relate to. Something without all the rules and laws that separate us as black people. I wanted those walls to be torn down.”

While “Kokomo City” might not break down some of those walls, it might at least spark conversations that should already be happening. And with that, hopefully, comes a step toward the authenticity of sex workers on the big screen.