‘Paris is Burning,’ a groundbreaking look at queer New York, turns 35
Jennie Livingston’s film, shot over several years in the ‘80s, examinated ballroom culture.
Paris is Burning is a documentary that does what documentary filmmaking, at its best, is supposed to do: It examines and contextualizes a world, likely previously unknown to most people watching it.
One of the most acclaimed nonfiction films of the 1990s, Paris is Burning was the product of the several years filmmaker Jennie Livingston spent in the world of New York City’s ballroom culture, and the gay people, drag performers, trans folks, and others in that world, all in the back half of the ‘80s.
Livingston is a white Yale graduate — her uncle, Alan J. Pakula, directed All the President’s Men – and she was presenting a documentary mostly about people of color, and that she was the one to tell this story has been somewhat controversial over the years.
It is also, to this day, the only feature documentary Livingston has directed, although she has made some shorts, and her long-in-the-works follow-up film, Earth Camp One, is expected in 2027, per the director’s website.
The film is rightly considered a classic.
Paris is Burning, while it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 1990, opened in New York in March of 1991, 35 years ago this week; I had not, until watching before writing this, seen the film from start to finish.
