Netflix on Friday began streaming a
documentary about transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson.
In The Death and Life of Marsha P.
Johnson, director David France takes a look at the life and death
of Johnson, known as “the Rosa Parks of the LGBT movement.”
Johnson played a pivotal role in the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and
co-founded the world's first organization devoted to transgender
rights, Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries, or STAR.
Police fished Johnson's body out of the
Hudson river in 1992. The NYPD ruled her death a suicide but
questions lingered.
“Almost single-handedly, Marsha P.
Johnson and her best friend, Sylvia Rivera, touched off a revolution
in the way we talk about gender today,” France said in a statement.
“Their names should be household words. But Marsha’s life was cut
tragically short and Sylvia died shortly thereafter, the victim of a
broken heart. Getting to know their story through the investigation
undertaken by Victoria Cruz, a seminal activist in her own right, has
been one of the great honors of my career. Now, with Netflix as our
distribution partner, I am confident the legacy of these tremendous
women will never be forgotten.”
France received an Academy Award
nomination for How to Survive a Plague, his 2012 documentary
that looked at the efforts of protest groups ACT UP and TAG in the
early years of the AIDS epidemic.