Netflix has acquired the worldwide
rights to a documentary about transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson.
According to Deadline
Hollywood, Netflix will later this year begin streaming David
France's The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. France
received an Academy Award nomination for How to Survive a Plague,
the 2012 documentary that looked at the efforts of ACT UP and TAG in
the early years of the AIDS epidemic.
In his follow up film, 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 her 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.”