"An unblinking behind-the-scenes story of fashion-obsessed New Yorkers who created "voguing" and drag balls, and turned those raucous celebrations into a powerful expression of fierce personal pride. This world-within-a-world is instantly familiar, filled with ambitions, desires and yearnings that reflect America itself. Paris Is Burning is an intimate portrait of one urban community, a world in which the allure of high fashion, status and wealth becomes an affirmation of love, acceptance and joy."
Paris is Burning is a 1990 Documentary film made by Jennie Livingston, exploring race, class, gender, and sexuality in New York drag ball competitions during the 90s. I posted this film because it was actually just recently introduced to me and upon watching it immediately I found I was in love with the raw, real nature of the film that was at time confused with being a narrative film due to the theatrical nature of some of it's characters. Some times in documentaries filmmakers have the habit of presuming that they are the only ones capable of expressing the point of the film, they take it upon themselves to explain and spoon-feed everything they can to their viewer. And this may or may not be a bad thing but I found that Livingston understood that her subjects were the only ones best equipped to tell their stories.
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