‘The Stroll’ review: telling their own stories

At several points in “The Stroll,” Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s affectionate portrayal of New York City’s transgender sex workers, moments of striking candor break the conventions of documentary.

An interviewee cautiously pauses in the middle of a conversation to check if it’s OK to reveal explicit details of her sex work, to which Lovell (who is transgender and a former prostitute herself) responds with, “Girl, you’re fine!” Later, as Lovell walks with another subject of the film, Izzy, through the now modernized Manhattan meatpacking district where they both once plied their trades, Izzy suddenly bursts into tears and interrupts the scene with a pained, “I can’t do it.” this. I hate this place.”

These scenes would have ended up on the cutting room floor in another documentary. Here, their inclusion reinforces the novelty of “The Stroll”: It’s the rare movie where transgender sex workers can speak for themselves without purifying or sensationalizing their experiences.

Lovell’s own story mirrors that of many of her interviewees, including ballroom icon Egyptt LaBeija and activist Ceyenne Doroshow. (Drucker, a trans artist and activist, remains behind the camera.) Lovell arrived in Manhattan as a teenager in the 1990s, seeking an escape from the hard life back home in Yonkers, but she was fired from her coffee shop job when she transition started. So she turned to “the walk”: a stretch of West 14th Street that cut through a blood-spattered neighborhood of meatpackers, providing a haven for itinerant gay and transgender prostitutes. It enabled Lovell and her colleagues not only to make a living, but also to find community — even a semblance of family.

Inspired to take the reins after being featured in a 2007 documentary, Lovell, along with Drucker, collects interviews and archive footage that sparkle with joy, banter, and sorority, even as they chronicle brutality and insecurity. What unfolds is a micro-history of New York: from the 1970s, with the city’s first gay rights movements (often excluding transgender people), to the broken windows policy of the 1990s and the economic fallout of September 11, to gentrification which began to engulf the city when Michael Bloomberg took office as mayor in 2002.

As the city seemed to some to become safer, more beautiful and richer, the most vulnerable residents paid a high price. “I can’t believe how many times I had to go to prison to build the Highline Park,” says Lovell wryly. But if ‘The Stroll’ is an indictment and an anthem, it is also a remarkable document of the self-determination of the women and workers who, despite the worst adversities, learned to care for themselves and each other.

The stroll
Not judged. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Look at max.