'Treasure' looks at life of Detroit transgender woman

In the film "Treasure," Brandie Brown describes seeing her sibling, Shelly, as a transgender woman. "She had a little black short hairstyle. She was dressed all in black. Nails long. She was looking good," says Brown, smiling at the memory.

Such love and acceptance seems in tune with what a current Entertainment Weekly banner headline describes as "America's Transformation."

The national conversation on gender identification is being fueled by groundbreaking transgender celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox of Netflix's "Orange is the New Black" as well as shows like Yahoo's comedy "Transparent" and ABC Family's reality series "Between Us."

But "Treasure" tells a different story. Subtitled "From Tragedy to Transjustice, Mapping a Detroit Story," it's about the death of Shelly Hilliard, an African-American transgender teen who was brutally murdered and mutilated in 2011.

The new documentary by writer-filmmaker Dream Hampton will have a free screening at 7:30 p.m. Thursday (doors open at 6:30) at the Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts. It's an unblinking look at what happened to Hilliard and the overwhelming pain it caused her mother and sisters.

But it also focuses on the efforts under way locally to help young people like her, who often face prejudice from the outside world, rejection at home and poverty that drives them to prostitution.

There are interviews with other transgender women, who open up about their lives and share examples of the harassment they endure. And there is footage of the haven of Highland Park's Ruth Ellis Center, which provides safety and support for runaway, homeless, and at-risk lesbian, gay and transgender youth.

In one aching scene, a community organizer doing outreach stops in a van to offer condoms and a sandwich to a transgender woman working the streets. As they chat about hairstyles through the vehicle's window, the woman, who doesn't want her face on camera, says, "I'm trying to stop doing this before something happens to me."

For Hampton, the movie is a chance to tell Hilliard's story and explore its broader issues, including the relationship between police and people of color, drug laws that have a Jim Crow-like impact and the criminalization of sex work.

"We have a Black Lives Matter moment and movement happening right now, which I'm so, so inspired by," says Hampton of the activism prompted by police killings of unarmed African-American men. "We also have a responsibility to center black women in this story. ... And then we have an extra duty to center black trans women. We have a duty to center the most vulnerable amongst us, and I think Shelly's case highlights that."

Hampton is speaking by phone from southern California, where "Treasure" had its world premiere Saturday at the Los Angeles Film Festival and screened again Tuesday to a sold-out crowd.

A writer, filmmaker, activist and single mother whose lengthy credits include collaborating with Jay-Z on his best-selling autobiography "Decoded," she first learned about Hilliard through social media postings that spread in Detroit when she was killed. "It was all over everyone's Facebook feeds," she recalls.

In the movie, Hilliard's mother talks about finding out one of her children was dead from Facebook.

Behind the headlines

Hampton left Detroit in 1990 as a teen to study film at New York University and staying there for nearly two decades. When her father died, she returned home in 2007 to be closer to her own mother. She says it felt like a critical time for Detroit and also a time when activists and artists were doing amazing things to further "a vision of what the city could be."

Work on "Treasure" started in 2012. Making the film was a three-year process funded by a 2012 Kresge Artist Fellowship grant to its producer, Natasha "T" Miller, and a subsequent 2014 Kresge grant for Hampton, plus a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign. In the end, Hampton wound up using some of her own money too.

According to the movie, suburban police caught Hilliard with marijuana a few days before she was murdered and coerced her into being a drug informant, then disclosed her confidential role in the sting that resulted.

A man arrested in the sting was one of two men who eventually pleaded guilty to Hilliard's murder. Hilliard's torso was found on Detroit's east side near I-94 and identified through a distinctive tattoo. Other body parts were discovered months later.

Hilliard's death was mentioned in a 2012 New Yorker article about police using young offenders for the difficult, dangerous job of confidential informant. Wrote Sarah Stillman, who's also in the documentary, "At first, because the victim was transgender, local officials believed that the murder was a hate crime. But several weeks later it became clear that Shelly's death was connected to work she had done as a police informant."

Hilliard's mother, Lyniece Nelson, ended up pursuing a civil rights lawsuit. The suit against one Madison Height police officer and the Madison Heights police department has been settled, says her attorney, Kathryn Bruner James. A judge is expected to rule later this year on remaining suits against a second police officer and Oakland County. The law office representing the defendants in those suits did not return Free Press calls for comment.

Hampton describes Nelson as a very private woman. Getting to know and film her and others close to Hilliard took some time. "I had to, I wouldn't say earn her trust because that in itself sounds like some manipulative goal, but I had to be myself and let her know who I was and why this story mattered to me."

Throughout filming, Hampton was sensitive to the trauma that Nelson had experienced. Hampton says on one of the last days of shooting, Nelson learned that another body part of Hilliard's was still in the Detroit morgue. "I asked her if she wanted me to come to the morgue … and she said no and I honored that," says Hampton.

Emani Love, 22, a black transgender woman and outreach worker for the Ruth Ellis Center who appears in the movie, says that "Treasure" could have an effect on lives. "(Hampton) recycled negative energy to produce something really positive and impactful. With all she has going on, she made room to do this and she invested so much conscious, loving, aware energy into it."

The movie feels like it's arriving "right on time," says Hampton, noting the current cultural attention to transgender matters. In fact, when the project first started, producer Miller suggested "Transparent" as the title, but the Yahoo series starring Jeffrey Tambor got there first.

"We didn't even think to lock (the title) down," says Hampton. "We were just trying to raise the money to get a camera to shoot with."

The film is competing for best documentary at the Los Angeles Film Festival. The Detroit screening will be followed later this summer by events in Philadelphia and Martha's Vineyard. Hampton is in talks to find ways to bring the movie to a wider audience.

"I need help, actually, because I'm trying to move on to other projects," she says, "and this one, in a wonderful way, is taking over my life."

Contact Julie Hinds: 313-222-6427 or jhinds@freepress.com.

'Treasure: From Tragedy to Transjustice, Mapping a Detroit Story'

7:30 p.m. Thursday (followed by an afterglow)

Detroit Film Theatre at the Detroit Institute of Arts

5200 Woodward, Detroit

Free

Recommended for those 14 and older