Paris Is Burning

Directed by Jennie Livingston | 78 minutes | M | 35th Anniversary |

7:00pm Saturday, 31 May | Estonian House | Buy Tickets | Buy Passes

HAVING A BALL ... WISH YOU WERE HERE

This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, Paris is Burning offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion “houses,” from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza. 35 years since its original release, Paris Is Burning remains a living, complicated and vital time capsule.

“To watch Paris is Burning as a transgender person is completely overwhelming. It's the cinematic equivalent of someone dying of thirst suddenly having a waterfall dropped on top of them.” - Willow Maclay, Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema

“In so many ways this is a story about the privileges of identity, and the ways that those excluded from those privileges have found to question and subvert them.” – K. Austin Collins, Vanity Fair

Co-Presented with Zachary Ruane

Country: United States
Year: 1990
Language: English