Georgina Beyer's life story has been sold to Australia and Britain even before it has screened on New Zealand TV. Lynda Hallinan meets the documentary makers.

Never mix sex with politics: unless you're making a documentary about the extraordinary life of Wairarapa MP Georgina Beyer. Then you can openly combine politics with prostitution, drugs, dancing and drag queens - and more than splattering of sequins to glam things up.

The world's first transsexual MP, Beyer's rags-to-riches story has already been well-documented. But it's a story that can stand retelling.

Georgie Girl is a new documentary produced and co-directed by Annie Goldson, in collaboration with gay novelist and director Peter Wells that screens on TV One next month.

Goldson, an associate professor Auckland University's department of film, television and media studies, has a history of making social-political documentaries. Her last film, Punitive Damage, told the story of Helen Todd, who successfully sued the Indonesian government after her son Kamal was gunned down during the Dili masssacre in East Timor.

Beyer's story offered a similar mix of politics and human drama. "I remember watching the television footage of Georgina at the RSA [when Beyer was elected to parliament in 1999] and it immediately struck me as such an anomaly, how someone transgendered and of indigenous descent could be elected by a largely white, rural electorate. It seemed such a quintessentially New Zealand story."

Goldson's success with Punitive Damage - which won a swag of international awards - helped secure funding for Georgie Girl, with grants from New Zealand on Air, TV One, SBS in Australia and from the Soros Documentary Fund of Open Society

The documentary has already been sold to SBS and Channel 4 in England and will screen this year at the Sydney and Brisbane International Film Festivals, with Melbourne on the cards. Goldson is negotiating with buyers in Germany, the US and Canada.

Given the sensational nature of Beyer's life, it would have been easy for Georgie Girl to stray into tabloid-style voyeurism But it never does, largely because of the decision not to use linking narration.

"I prefer talking heads," Goldson explains, "and who could speak better for Georgina than herself?"

It helped that Wells and Beyer are friends, having known each other since the mid-'80s when Wells directed her in the half-hour television drama Jewel's Darl.

"It was the first piece of what you might call queer, television in New Zealand," he recalls. It was a milestone for Beyer too: her role saw her nominated in the 1987 New Zealand Film and Television Awards, for best actress. "Even then, as an actress she showed some of the qualities she has since developed as a politician, such as reliability and honesty," he says.

That honesty hasn't always worked in Beyer's favour. When she was running for the Carterton mayoralty 60 Minutes reporter Genevieve Westcott asked what it was like having sex for the first time as a woman. Ian Fraser pressed her on post-operative pain.

"The media kept presenting her as a sort of show-biz style freak," Wells says. "That line of questioning is so hurtful. Georgie is a tough person, but she's capable of being hurt just like anyone else."

The documentary's most telling moment is Beyer's admittance that her public profile has sacrificed any chance of a normal heterosexual relationship.

"I do come home at the end of the day by myself. There is no one lying in bed with me . . . I know I'll live to regret it. I regret it now in some respects."

Despite the highs and lows, Georgie Girl presents Beyer's life within the mellow glow of nostalgia. "We found some amazing archive footage - stuff that even Georgina hadn't seen for a long time," says Goldson. "In the 1970s, television was obsessed with what they called the 'twilight zone' and with New Zealand being such a small country, Georgina ended up in a lot of it."

This old footage, couple with Country Calendar-style images of green pastures and sheep races at Castlepoint, has been juxtaposed to exploit the dichotomy of Beyer's life as politician and gay icon. At times it is almost comedic: here's Georgina the drag queen; there's Georgina meeting the Queen.

The issue of prostitution is also tackled with humour. Carmen, our most famous transsexual and a major figure in Beyer's life, throatily jokes that her coffee lounge in the 1970s offered "supper downstairs, sweets upstairs". Even the images of Beyer in parliament look as if they could have been filmed three decades ago. It's so kitsch, so kiwiana, with a refreshingly non-urbanite supporting cast of Beyer's friends and constituents.

Georgie Girl is delightfully upbeat and Beyer's story so inspiring, it comes dangerously close to sycophancy.

Perhaps it is because the redneck rural types you expect to encounter are conspicuously absent. Goldson and Wells point out it wasn't through a lack of trying. It just turned out Wairarapa's bigots were a bit camera-shy. "It was extremely difficult to find anyone to say something against her. I remember we were filming one day and a middle aged woman rolled down her car window and asked what we were doing. I told her we were doing a documentary on Georgie and she said, 'That's a waste of time. She just lapdanced her way to the top'. But there was no way she would repeat that on camera," Wells says.

The only dissenting voice is that of Beyer's political adversary in the 1999 election, National candidate Paul Henry, whose campaign included such enlightening one-liners as "I'm still male".

As a result, Georgie Girl focuses not on prejudice but on the affection Wairarapa residents feel for Beyer. At the local RSA, the old diggers clearly love her. She works hard, they say, and she's no snob.

Beyer's friend Chris Burt sums it up best when she says, "the bottom line about what happened in Carterton is that an ex-prostitute arrived in town and three years later, she was the mayor. I mean it just doesn't happen - but it did."