Poignant doctor gives flowers to trans icon

Towards the end of Jennie Livingston’s film Paris is burning, Venus Xtravaganza, a Puerto Rican Italian ballroom dancer who was one of the queer documentary’s featured subjects, describes a harrowing near-death experience. While Venus was posing as a sex worker, a client realized she was a trans woman and reacted violently. “You’re a monster,” Venus remembers the man telling her, “I should kill you.” Shaken by the threat, Venus grabbed her bag and jumped out the window. The story is particularly haunting because a few scenes later, Venus’s mother, Angie, reveals that the young ballroom artist was found strangled to death in a Manhattan hotel. “She was like my right hand,” Angie says. “I miss her.”

The depth of Venus’ loss is acutely felt in Kimberly Reed’s moving documentary I am your Venus. The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, is one of the last projects produced by Jeff Skoll’s Participant Media, which is closing its doors after 20 years in business.

It is both a posthumous biography of the drag queen and an account of her biological families’ and ballroom’s attempts to honor her legacy. Chronicling the experiences of these very different groups, both deeply in love with Venus, Reed (Black silver) paints a humanizing portrait of the legendary artist and offers a model for community healing.

Combining verité footage shot by cinematographers Rose Bush and Joshua Z. Weinstein with re-edited clips from Paris is burningReed bridges the past and present to create a conversation between Venus and the surviving members of her biological family. I am your Venus opens with now-famous scenes of its subject in Livingston’s film, with voiceovers from his brothers, who exult in his legacy. “She will always be a Pellagatti,” says a brother with pride.

But the reality of this statement is fraught with a history of incomprehension, rejection and violence. Before running away from Jersey City to New York, Venus lived with her grandmother, who loved and supported her in ways the rest of the family could not.

Later interviews with Venus’s surviving brothers, Joe, John and Louie Pellagatti, reveal how the three men struggled to accept their sister. They speak candidly about how repudiating her identity caused her to move away. Now, more than 30 years later, they want to honor Venus’ memory by posthumously changing her legal name so they can commission a new headstone for her grave. Their other objective is to reopen the police investigation into his murder.

For the latter, Joe, John and Louie join forces with current members of House of Xtravaganza, including Amara Gisele, Gisele Alicea and Jose Disla, who…