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Netflix debuted “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” on Oct. 6, but filmmaker Reina Gossett claims that the documentary’s director, David France, appropriated her idea and research for the project.

“David got inspired to make this film from a grant application video that Sasha [Wortzel] and I made and sent to Kalamazoo/Arcus Foundation social justice center while he was visiting,” Gossett wrote in a statement, shared today on Twitter by author and activist Janet Mock. “He told the people who worked there — I shit you not — that he should be the one to do this film.”

She then alleged that to make his film and secure a grant from the Sundance Institute and the Arcus Foundation, France pilfered her contacts as well as her work on advocacy group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. Additionally, Gossett wrote that France convinced Vimeo to take down a video she’d uploaded of...

Directed by Michael Kasino and Richard Morrison, Pay It No Mind - The Life and Times of Marsha P. Johnson is a feature-length documentary that focuses on revolutionary trans-activist, Marsha "Pay it No Mind" Johnson - a Stonewall instigator, Andy Warhol model, drag queen, sex worker, starving actress, and Saint. With her final interview from 1992, Pay It No Mind captures the legendary gay/human rights activist as she recounts her life at the forefront of The Stonewall Riots in the 1960s, the creation of S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries) with Sylvia Rivera in the '70s, and a New York City activist throughout the '80s and early...