Happy Birthday, Marsha!

is a 2017 fictional short film that imagines the gay and transgender rights pioneers Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera in the hours that led up to the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.

[11] The film received some press after Tourmaline accused David France of using some of her labor and footage in his 2017 documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson.

At the bar, Johnson is confronted by event security, who claim people aren't allowed to perform in drag.

An enraged Johnson throws a drink at the officers, immediately inciting chaos in the bar, starting the Stonewall riots.

[18] Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992) was an African-American Gay Liberation activist and self-identified drag queen,[19][20] active through the 1960s through the 1990s in New York City and internationally.

In a 2017 Instagram post, Tourmaline claimed filmmaker David France took inspiration from her grant application video and research to make his documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P.

[37] France responded on social media and in interviews where he acknowledged his privileges, but also "flatly denied" all allegations of plagiarism.

[10][16] The "video that [Tourmaline] put online", which she accused France of stealing, was of Sylvia Rivera's famous "Gay Power!"

[40][10] It was filmed at NYC Pride in 1973, 10 years before Tourmaline was born, by the Lesbians Organized for Video Experience (LOVE) Collective.

[10] It had been shown in the Queer community since 1973, and reached international audiences on PBS in 1995 as part of Arthur Dong's documentary, The Question of Equality: Out Rage '69, as well as on HBO in 2011.

LOVE Collective's Tracy Fitz confirmed to The Advocate that they, as the license holders, took down Tourmaline's illegal usage, and that France had nothing to do with it.

[16] Speaking to The Advocate, France did concede one point: he acknowledged that he was present at Cooper Union in November 2015 when Tourmaline exhibited work that included a rare clip of Johnson, speaking in a basement, shot in 1991 by New York University professor Darrell Wilson, previously inaccessible to anyone but New York University film students.