This Documentary Is a Important Portrait of Trans Icon Donna Personna

“Understanding comes from revealing your self,” says trans activist, artist and performer Donna Personna within the extraordinary new documentary movie, Donna. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Jay Bedwani (My Mom), the movie is an intimate portrait of Personna’s life, chronicling her singular journey over the previous 75 years. Weaving collectively previous and current right into a kaleidoscopic tapestry of identification, household, historical past, riot and artwork, Donna is a love letter from a lady who has survived to inform the story.

Hailing from San Jose, California, Personna was the youngest of 13 kids born to a Mexican-American minister and his spouse, however she by no means fairly match into the heteronormative confines of conventional Christian life. Understanding the reality of her identification may destroy her household’s life and livelihood, she left dwelling at 19 and took a Greyhound bus to San Francisco.

Personna settled into the town’s famed Tenderloin district, the place she occurred upon Compton’s Cafeteria, one of many few locations within the metropolis trans and gender non-conforming individuals may brazenly congregate. Though Personna didn’t establish as trans on the time, she instantly felt at dwelling in the neighborhood. After getting her begin performing with the fabled SF theatrical troupe the Cockettes, Personna turned a fixture on the scene – but it surely wasn’t till age 59 that she stepped onto the stage at Aunt Charlie’s in drag for the primary time.

In Donna, Bedwani crafts a multifaceted portrait of Personna’s life whereas co-writing a play about Compton’s Cafeteria riot. After lengthy nights of hustling, trans individuals and drag queens got here to Compton’s to kick off their heels and let their hair down – solely to come across police harassment, brutality, and arrest for the crime of “feminine impersonation”. One night time in August 1966, that they had sufficient. After an officer grabbed a trans girl to position her beneath arrest, she threw a cup of espresso in his face. The cafeteria erupted as patrons flipped tables, threw tableware and brandished heels, driving police out to the road the place the combating continued and arrests had been made.

The trans neighborhood laid the groundwork for a bigger liberation motion that may ignite three years later on the Stonewall Inn in New York. Though Personna didn’t take part within the rebellion, she knew many who did – and paid tribute to their braveness and heroism within the play and the movie. We watch as Personna works with a brand new era of trans individuals to carry the play to life, sharing a wealth of wit, knowledge, and heat that comes from figuring out the important thing to survival is to by no means quit. “My favourite phrase is persistence – you don’t must be good, simply preserve at it,” Personna says within the movie.

Reflecting on the ability of persistence, Personna tells AnOther, “You recognize, 65 years in the past we lived in a really completely different world. I knew that I used to be in my very own universe in a approach. I used to be with my household however I had emotions I didn’t wish to share with them as a result of it was so overseas – and all of the messages I bought from the world had been that what I used to be feeling was simply incorrect. In order that’s the place my persistence started. I used to be dodging the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and to get via my day, I needed to stand up and transfer away from that as a substitute of folding.”

Blessed with the energy of self-love and the braveness to see herself via, Personna refused to simply accept the judgments of the surface world. “At dwelling I bought the message that I used to be a beautiful human being and that there was nothing incorrect with me so once I left the home,” she says. “The horrible issues individuals mentioned to me, I might say to myself, ‘They’re incorrect. They don’t know.’ It harm me, but it surely made me combating mad.”

Personna’s beautiful candor, irrepressible spirit, and distinctive model are equally evident on movie and in life. Bedwani recounts their first assembly a decade in the past at a Homosexual Delight pool occasion in San Francisco. “I noticed Donna standing by the pool, sporting this lovely crimson sequined costume, wanting very considerate and quiet,” he says. “A good friend launched me to her and we had a beautiful dialog about Marilyn Monroe, household and books. I used to be a photographer on the time and requested if I may take some photographs of her. We hung out strolling across the neighborhoods of San Francisco, taking photographs and chatting, and that’s once I switched my digital camera to movie her.”

From this fateful encounter, issues grew organically. A pure, Donna shines whether or not on movie or chatting on speakerphone for this interview. “I imagine in magic,” she says, and watching her journey you’ll too. “I waited till I used to be 59 to dwell as a lady as a result of I used to be too nervous to indicate anyone. It was a problem for me however I lastly felt the liberty to try this. My household is strongly Christian and I used to be nervous about having them see me as a lady however my nieces and nephews all name me ‘tia’ (aunt).”

As an LGBTQ+ elder, Personna cares for the brand new era coming of age at this time. Whereas standing on the shoulders of those that paved the way in which, the trans neighborhood stands on the frontlines of the battle for human rights in america. “Now greater than ever, I’m requested to talk at faculties. I say to the younger individuals, I do know you need validity on your life, as I do, and the one factor that exhibits you actually belong right here is that you’ve a previous. You come from a convention,” she says.

“If you’re kicked out from your individual household or from society, make a household amongst yourselves. You are able to do one thing at this time to make your life higher and to indicate the world that you’ve a proper to be right here. Once we’re speaking about acceptance and approval, that will get my shoulders tight. I come pre-approved. You recognize it. I do know it. I’m fabulous. Give me my rights!”

Donna is launched in UK cinemas and on Bohemia Euphoria on 15 July 2022.