Editor's note: This past weekend, Netflix debuted the documentary "The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson", directed by David France. On Saturday, trans activist and co-director of the film "Happy Birthday Marsha!", Tourmaline, posted a photo on Instagram with a caption stating that France capitalized on her archival research and ideas for his film. France has since responded in a Facebook post. Below is Tourmaline’s first op-ed on this subject.

I first learned about Marsha “Pay It No Mind” Johnson as a young person hanging out on New York City’s Christopher Street in the early 2000s. Marsha was a revolutionary black trans woman who was among the first to fight back against the racist and homophobic police at the 1969 Stonewall Riots. She was HIV positive, a sex worker, and an incredible performer and member of the group Hot Peaches. She organized people in jails and prisons, hospitals, and psych wards. With Sylvia Rivera, she co-founded the group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) to provide community care and housing for other queer and trans poor people. She often wore discarded flowers in her hair and brightened the days of people on Christopher Street with her contagious smile.

As I heard Marsha’s stories from people around me, I felt so moved by her refusal to stay small in the face of unimaginable violence. I felt a deep desire to know more about her, but I couldn’t find much written.

So for over a decade I dove into living rooms and libraries looking for whatever I could find, frequently facing down anti-black transphobic violence just to get in an archive’s door. But the work was feeding me so I kept going.

As I found more material, I started to wonder why so few people knew about Marsha. I realized that Marsha’s life had been deemed unimportant and unworthy of documenting by historians who have never cared about the lives of black trans and gender nonconforming people. Historical erasure of black trans life means so many of us are disconnected from the legacies of trans women before us, denied access to stories about ourselves, in our own voices. So it became increasingly important for me to not just find out more about Marsha but to share every bit of what I learned through my blog, writing and community organizing work so that we could reclaim and be nourished by our history.

One of the most profound moments I had was finding the footage of Sylvia Rivera’s famous “y’all better quiet down” speech. Watching it, I started to cry feeling how alive these legacies were. It was then that I dreamt of making a film about Sylvia and Marsha’s life, to uplift and share their incredible work. I dreamt of a day that black trans women and the people who love us would come away from watching my film feeling more connected to ourselves and our sense of power and joy and feel more free in the face of struggle.

I joined up with filmmaker Sasha Wortzel to co-direct a documentary about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. We did a ton of archival research, interviewing, and collecting oral histories. I felt like we were on a critical path that Marsha had laid out for us, like I was living my purpose by sharing her story with the world.

David France’s documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, premiered on Netflix last October 6 while the one I envisioned with Sasha did not get made. We had applied for a grant to at least one of the same foundations that France, a white cisgender gay man, had applied to, but it was his film that got funding and not ours. Long before France’s film premiered, Sasha and I had decided to change course and make a short narrative film instead of a documentary. After we learned that France was planning his film, we knew we’d we’d face significant challenges making a documentary with a lower budget and fewer resources than he had. We were hopeful that our community would continue to support us, and were thrilled when we were able to crowdfund our film through donations via Kickstarter. It was truly a community effort, and I felt my relationship with Marsha deepening as we continued making Happy Birthday Marsha!. We are so proud of the final cut, which will premiere in 2018.