Paris is Burning (film)
Encyclopedia
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film
directed by Jennie Livingston
. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture
of New York City
and the African American
, Latino
, gay
and transgender
communities involved in it. Many members of the ball culture
community consider Paris Is Burning to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the "Golden Age" of New York City drag balls, as well as a thoughtful exploration of race, class, and gender in America.
Most of the film alternates between footage of balls and interviews with prominent members of the scene, including Pepper LaBeija
, Dorian Corey
, Anji Xtravaganza
, and Willi Ninja
. Many of the contestants vying for trophies are representatives of "Houses" (in the fashion sense, such as "House of Chanel") that serve as intentional families, social groups, and performance teams. Houses and ball contestants who consistently won in their walks eventually earned a "legendary" status.
Jennie Livingston, who never went to film school and who spent seven years making Paris Is Burning, concentrated on interviews with key figures in the ball world, many of whom contribute monologues that shed light on the ball culture as well as on their own personalities. In the film, titles such as "house," "mother," and "reading" emphasize how the subculture the film depicts has taken words from the straight and white worlds, and imbued them with alternate meanings, just as the "houses" serve as surrogate families for young ball-walkers whose sexual orientations have sometimes made acceptance and love within their own families hard to come by.
The film also explores how its subjects dealt with the adversity of racism
, homophobia
, AIDS
, and poverty
. For example, some, like Venus Xtravaganza
became sex workers, some shoplift
clothing, and some were thrown out of their homes by homophobic parents. One was saving money for sex reassignment surgery
. Through candid one-on-one interviews the film offers insight into the lives and struggles of its subjects and the strength, pride, and humor they maintain to survive in a "rich, white world."
Drag
is presented as a complex performance of gender, class and race, in which one can express one's identity, desires and aspirations along many dimensions. The African American and Latino community depicted in the film includes a diverse range of identities and gender presentations, from gay men to butch queens to transsexual women.
The film also documents the origins of "voguing
", a dance style in which competing ball-walkers freeze and "pose" in glamorous positions (as if being photographed for the cover of Vogue
). Pop star Malcolm McLaren
would, two years before Paris Is Burning was completed, bring the phenomenon to the mainstream with his song "Deep In Vogue
", which directly referenced many of the stars of Paris Is Burning including Pepper Labeija and featured dancers from the film including Willi Ninja. One year after this, Madonna
released her number one song Vogue, bringing further attention to the dancing style.
shortly during the period when the organization was under fire for funding controversial artists including Robert Mapplethorpe
and Andres Serrano
. Aware that publicity surrounding her project could result in revoked funding, Livingston avoided releasing many details about the project outside of her small circle of producers and collaborators.
Several of the most heavily featured performers wished to sue in 1991, for a share of the profits made from the film. Paris DuPree sought the largest settlement with $40 million for unauthorized use of her ball.
The producers had always planned on paying participants, should the film succeed -- and a large sum was distributed after the group's attorney saw that the participants had signed releases, except that now the lawyer kept half.
20 years later, Paris is Burning remains an organizing tool for queer and trans youth; a way for scholars and students to examine issues of race, class, and gender; a way for younger ball participants to meet their ancestors; and a portrait of several remarkable Americans, many of whom are no longer here.
Long out of print on videocassette, the film was released on DVD in 2005.
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
directed by Jennie Livingston
Jennie Livingston
Jennie Livingston is an American director best known for the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning.Livingston was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Los Angeles where she attended Beverly HIlls High School. She graduated from Yale University in 1983, where she studied photography, drawing, and...
. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture
Ball culture
Ball culture, the house system, the ballroom community and similar terms describe the underground LGBT subculture in the United States in which people "walk" for trophies and prizes at events known as balls. Those who walk often also dance and vogue while others compete in various genres of drag...
of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and the African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
, Latino
Latino
The demonyms Latino and Latina , are defined in English language dictionaries as:* "a person of Latin-American descent."* "A Latin American."* "A person of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, often one living in the United States."...
, gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
and transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
communities involved in it. Many members of the ball culture
Ball culture
Ball culture, the house system, the ballroom community and similar terms describe the underground LGBT subculture in the United States in which people "walk" for trophies and prizes at events known as balls. Those who walk often also dance and vogue while others compete in various genres of drag...
community consider Paris Is Burning to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the "Golden Age" of New York City drag balls, as well as a thoughtful exploration of race, class, and gender in America.
Content
The film explores the elaborately-structured Ball competitions in which contestants, adhering to a very specific category or theme, must "walk" (much like a fashion model's runway) and subsequently be judged on criteria including the "realness" of their drag, the beauty of their clothing and their dancing ability.Most of the film alternates between footage of balls and interviews with prominent members of the scene, including Pepper LaBeija
Pepper LaBeija
Pepper LaBeija , born William Jackson, was an American drag queen performer and designer featured in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning and in the 2006 documentary How Do I Look directed by Wolfgang Busch...
, Dorian Corey
Dorian Corey
Dorian Corey was an American crossdresser performer and designer featured in the 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning.Corey grew up in Buffalo, New York...
, Anji Xtravaganza
Anji Xtravaganza
Angie Xtravaganza was born 'Angel Segarra' in Puerto Rico. Angie was a founding member and the Mother of the House of Xtravaganza. Consistent with the tradition of New York's gay ball scene, in 1982 Angie took the House name as her surname...
, and Willi Ninja
Willi Ninja
Willi Ninja was an American dancer and choreographer best known for his appearance in the documentary film Paris is Burning....
. Many of the contestants vying for trophies are representatives of "Houses" (in the fashion sense, such as "House of Chanel") that serve as intentional families, social groups, and performance teams. Houses and ball contestants who consistently won in their walks eventually earned a "legendary" status.
Jennie Livingston, who never went to film school and who spent seven years making Paris Is Burning, concentrated on interviews with key figures in the ball world, many of whom contribute monologues that shed light on the ball culture as well as on their own personalities. In the film, titles such as "house," "mother," and "reading" emphasize how the subculture the film depicts has taken words from the straight and white worlds, and imbued them with alternate meanings, just as the "houses" serve as surrogate families for young ball-walkers whose sexual orientations have sometimes made acceptance and love within their own families hard to come by.
The film also explores how its subjects dealt with the adversity of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, and poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
. For example, some, like Venus Xtravaganza
Venus Xtravaganza
Venus Xtravaganza was a transgender American saving up money for sex reassignment surgery while earning a living as a prostitute in New York City. Venus Xtravaganza came to national attention appearing in Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning, a 1990 documentary film about New York City ball culture...
became sex workers, some shoplift
Shoplifting
Shoplifting is theft of goods from a retail establishment. It is one of the most common property crimes dealt with by police and courts....
clothing, and some were thrown out of their homes by homophobic parents. One was saving money for sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble...
. Through candid one-on-one interviews the film offers insight into the lives and struggles of its subjects and the strength, pride, and humor they maintain to survive in a "rich, white world."
Drag
Drag (clothing)
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...
is presented as a complex performance of gender, class and race, in which one can express one's identity, desires and aspirations along many dimensions. The African American and Latino community depicted in the film includes a diverse range of identities and gender presentations, from gay men to butch queens to transsexual women.
The film also documents the origins of "voguing
Vogue (dance)
Vogue or voguing is a highly stylized, modern house dance that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene in the 1960s. It gained mainstream exposure when it was featured in Madonna's song and video "Vogue" , and when showcased in the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning...
", a dance style in which competing ball-walkers freeze and "pose" in glamorous positions (as if being photographed for the cover of Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
). Pop star Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm McLaren
Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren was an English performer, impresario, self-publicist and manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls...
would, two years before Paris Is Burning was completed, bring the phenomenon to the mainstream with his song "Deep In Vogue
Deep in Vogue
"Deep in Vogue" is a 1989 dance single by Malcolm McLaren and the Bootzilla Orchestra featuring Lourdes and Willie Ninja. The song was lifted from his fourth album Waltz Darling. The single was McLaren's fourth entry on the dance play charts and his only number one. "Deep in Vogue" was number one...
", which directly referenced many of the stars of Paris Is Burning including Pepper Labeija and featured dancers from the film including Willi Ninja. One year after this, Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)
Madonna is an American singer-songwriter, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York City in 1977 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing in the music groups Breakfast Club and Emmy, she released her debut album in 1983...
released her number one song Vogue, bringing further attention to the dancing style.
Controversy
The film received funding from the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
shortly during the period when the organization was under fire for funding controversial artists including Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black and white portraits, photos of flowers and nude men...
and Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano
Andres Serrano is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work "Piss Christ", a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported...
. Aware that publicity surrounding her project could result in revoked funding, Livingston avoided releasing many details about the project outside of her small circle of producers and collaborators.
Several of the most heavily featured performers wished to sue in 1991, for a share of the profits made from the film. Paris DuPree sought the largest settlement with $40 million for unauthorized use of her ball.
The producers had always planned on paying participants, should the film succeed -- and a large sum was distributed after the group's attorney saw that the participants had signed releases, except that now the lawyer kept half.
Critical reception
Upon its release the documentary received rave reviews from critics and won several awards including a Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, a Berlin Film Festival Teddy Bear, an audience award from the Toronto International Film Festival, a GLAAD Media Award, a Women in Film Crystal Award, a Best Documentary award from the Los Angeles, New York, and National Film Critics' Circles, and it also was named as one of the 1991's best films by the LA Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, Time Magazine and others. 'Paris Is Burning' failed to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary feature that year, adding to a growing perception that certain subjects and treatments were excluded from consideration for Oscars, and leading, in part, to a change in how documentaries are nominated for the Academy Awards. Amongst communities of color, response was mixed: critic bell hooks (writing for Z Magazine) saw the ball world and participants as politically and personally misguided, and the filmmaker as primarily a white filmmaker portraying a Black and Latino subculture for the entertainment of other white people; several queer critics of color (Michelle Parkerson writing for the Black Film Review; Essex Hemphill writing for The Guardian; Jacky Goldsby writing for Afterimage) saw the film as a collection of authentic, powerful voices. Jesse Green, writing for the New York Times, suggested that making Paris is Burning had enabled Livingston to become a filmmaker, while the film had done nothing for the people in the film.20 years later, Paris is Burning remains an organizing tool for queer and trans youth; a way for scholars and students to examine issues of race, class, and gender; a way for younger ball participants to meet their ancestors; and a portrait of several remarkable Americans, many of whom are no longer here.
Long out of print on videocassette, the film was released on DVD in 2005.
Awards
- 1990 IDA Award, International Documentary Association
- 1990 LAFCA Award Best Documentary, Los Angeles Film Critics AssociationLos Angeles Film Critics AssociationThe Los Angeles Film Critics Association was founded in 1975. Its main purpose is to present yearly awards to members of the film industry who have excelled in their fields. These awards are presented each January...
- 1990 Audience Award Best Documentary, San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
- 1991 Grand Jury Prize Documentary, Sundance Film FestivalSundance Film FestivalThe Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
- 1991 Teddy AwardTeddy AwardThe Teddy Award is an international film award for films with LGBT topics, presented by an independent jury as an official award of the Berlin International Film Festival . Here, an "independent jury" implies that its members are not officially selected by the committee of the Berlinale...
for Best Documentary Film, Berlin International Film Festival - 1991 Boston Society of Film Critics Awards (BSFC) Best Documentary
- 1991 the very first Open Palm Award, now called Breakthrough Director Award Gotham AwardsGotham AwardsThe Gotham Awards is an annual ceremony of awards presented to the makers of independent films which takes place in New York City...
- 1991 NYFCC Award Best Documentary, New York Film Critics Circle AwardsNew York Film Critics Circle AwardsNew York Film Critics' Circle Awards are given annually to honor excellence in cinema worldwide by an organization of film reviewers from New York City-based publications. It is considered one of the most important precursors to the Academy Awards....
- 1991 Golden Space Needle Award Best Documentary, Seattle International Film FestivalSeattle International Film FestivalThe Seattle International Film Festival , held annually in Seattle, Washington since 1976, is among the top film festivals in North America. Audiences have grown steadily; the 2006 festival had 160,000 attendees...
- 1992 Outstanding Film (Documentary), GLAAD Media AwardsGLAAD Media AwardsThe GLAAD Media Award is an accolade bestowed by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to recognize and honor various branches of the media for their outstanding representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and the issues that affect their lives...
- 1992 NSFC Award Best Documentary, National Society of Film Critics