Nearly 40 years after the release of Paris Is Burning (1990), Jennie Livingston’s beloved documentary exploring the LGBTQ+ underworld of New York’s ball culture, its reputation is stronger than ever. Although so many of the formidable ballroom stars spotlighted in the film – Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, Octavia St. Laurent, Angie Xtravaganza, Venus Xtravaganza – are no longer with us, clips of their performances and their sharp, witty pieces to camera have been embraced by online audiences. The interviewees’ critiques of race, class, gender and the construction of identity in Reagan’s America have taken on new resonances in the Trump era. I spoke to Livingston on the occasion of her film arriving on UK Blu-ray for the first time, in a new 2K restoration which she supervised.
Livingston explains that the film started life as a photography project (‘I wanted to be Robert Frank or Diane Arbus’). After encountering people voguing in Washington Square Park and photographing them, she attended a ball and realised there was potential for a film. Getting access to the balls was relatively easy, with the performers happy to be filmed. ‘There really wasn’t a sense that there was a barrier to anybody attending or competing,’ says Livingston. ‘It wasn’t a segregated space, it was a party space, and if you have cameras, you’re invited to go in.’ Livingston made the decision not to narrate the film or appear on camera – ‘The people interviewed are more interesting than I am. Who wants to see the nerdy white kid?’
The new Criterion release boasts a rich selection of extra features, including nearly two hours of deleted scenes. Livingston regrets having to exclude some of the footage. ‘The thing I loved most were the cut scenes [where people are talking] about religion. I felt like the ball was a kind of spiritual space. Octavia saying, “I think God wanted me to be trans because he made me this way.” Venus very sincerely saying that she had a saint who she talked to. I love that, because I felt there were deep spiritual roots in the ballroom community. But I didn’t know where this would fit in the film.’
Livingston served as a consulting editor on the FX show Pose (2018-21), Ryan Murphy’s tribute to ballroom culture, which was clearly inspired by the subjects of Paris Is Burning. She even directed an episode, but despite the success of her debut film, subsequent film work has been sporadic. Did she choose to step back from filming? ‘It’s all about funding. I kind of joke that, in the lexicon of the ball world, I win trophies for slowest filmmaker. It’s really hard to get money.’ But new work is in the pipeline. ‘I’m working on a film now, I’m pretty sure it will be done next year. It’s about a hippie summer camp in the 70s. It’s about loss, it’s about queer identity. And it has a musical number.’ Does she mind having such a sparse body of film work? ‘It’s OK to not have a filmography that looks like someone else’s. And Agnès Varda and Fred Wiseman were making their best films in their nineties.’
Paris Is Burning is very much a snapshot of 1980s America. Has the film resonated differently with British audiences? ‘I think the themes are universal. But I also think British people have a different relationship to class. [US citizens’] relationship to class is really deceptive and wrong. I mean, Americans feel there’s mobility. There isn’t.’ With the film’s legacy now firmly established, Livingston adds: ‘It’s sad that so many people in the film are gone. The film discusses the murder of Venus, but not so long after the film’s completion and release, so many people died: Kim, Pepper, Octavia, Angie, Dorian, Willi and others. So many of the losses are, I feel, related to poor healthcare in my country, especially for people who belong to groups who receive substandard healthcare due to all kinds of social and systemic factors. I wish Dorian and Willi, and all the others, were here to know how the film has had such a long life, and how their words and actions have meant so much to so many audiences. People come up to me and say: “Paris Is Burning helped me imagine I could live the life I needed to live.”’
Alex Davidson, Sight and Sound, October 2026
When Jennie Livingston’s documentary about Harlem’s gay ball scene opened as a 58-minute video at New York’s New Festival of Gay and Lesbian Film in 1990, it was instantly recognised as a masterpiece of underworld reportage. And not just within the gay culture. Bounced up from 16mm form, with added credits, a flashcard guide to the ball vocabulary and a killer soundtrack of disco hits, the film scooped the kind of awards that its voguing heroes would die for. At New York’s Film Forum, it ran for a record-breaking 17 weeks in 1991. In Britain too, where a truncated version was screened on BBC TV’s Arena in 1990, it provoked strong reactions and high ratings.
This is a satisfying success. The release of Livingston’s film was roughly contemporary with the discovery of the underground ball scene by the pop world, as commemorated on records like Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ and Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Deep in Vogue’. Although the latter actually used ball world personnel – Willi Ninja featured in McLaren’s video and was flown all over the world to promote the record – it was obvious that both stars were only temporary sojourners on a souvenir hunt. Livingston makes it quite clear that the world of Paris is one filled with complex messages that require a more careful analysis than pop appropriation can provide.
Livingston’s method of weaving the ball, street and interview footage into a coherent and flowing whole is audaciously simple. Some 20 phrases flashed up on screen – Bangee! Luscious Body! Pig Latin! – announce the film’s editorial structure. Each phrase is defined, elaborated on and activated in ensuing shots. The careful segues between sections establish a fluid momentum in which very little intervention is necessary; Livingston never appears as interlocutor although her presence is very much felt through her choice of material. Livingston, on record as a lesbian of German Jewish extraction, finds in the ball scene men marginalised through race and sexuality. Her implicit message – one which should be heard by us all – is that the benefits of community are underlined by its role as protection against outside threats. Short of the ritualised combats of the ball-walking scenes, violence is off-screen, out there and completely real. The ball queens inhabit a dangerous world.
If the wit, glamour and mind-boggling outfits of Paris Is Burning are disarming, not far beneath the film’s surface is an immensely moving quality. Watching the sublimely elegant Willi teaching a class of slouchy (real) girls a feminine deportment is hilarious, but the outside world intrudes in a more insidious way. Venus’ death (presumably at the hands of a client who discovered her secret) is bad enough; but realising that no amount of ballroom realness can get these voguing ‘executives’ off the Harlem catwalks and onto Wall Street itself is quietly heart-breaking.
Louise Gray, Sight and Sound, April 1993
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
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