Paris Is Burning
パリ、夜は眠らない。
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Harlem's drag balls in the late 1980s; the source of 'reading', 'shade' and 'realness', and the ethics debate about who profits from it.
Jennie Livingston, a young photographer new to New York, saw young men voguing in Washington Square Park and followed the dance to the drag balls of Harlem. She filmed through the second half of the 1980s, and the film takes its title from one of those balls.
Paris Is Burning moves between the balls and long, candid interviews. Competitors walk in categories and are judged on realness: how completely they could pass, out in the world, as an executive, a schoolgirl, a soldier or a straight man. Most belong to houses, chosen families led by a mother, which take in young Black and Latino gay men and trans women whose own families have turned them away.
Pepper LaBeija, mother of the House of LaBeija, has been reigning, she says, for two decades. Dorian Corey, an older performer making up at her mirror, explains reading and shade, and says she once wanted to leave her mark on the world and now thinks simply getting through life may be mark enough. Willi Ninja, mother of the House of Ninja, shows how voguing borrows the poses of fashion models. Venus Xtravaganza, a young trans woman, talks about finding a husband and about the surgery she wants in order to feel complete, and about the night she escaped a man who turned on her when he learned she was trans. Others speak of sex work, shoplifting clothes to walk in, AIDS and saving for surgery.
In the footage from 1989, voguing is reaching the mainstream and Willi's career is taking him abroad. Venus is gone. In December 1988 she was found dead in a hotel room, murdered; her killer was never identified. The film's last scenes belong to Angie Xtravaganza, the mother of her house, taking in the news and saying she had always feared for her.
Starring
Pepper LaBeijaHerself
Mother of the House of LaBeija, a legend of the balls who has been reigning, she says, for two decades.
Dorian CoreyHerself
An older drag performer and designer who explains reading and shade and looks back on the stardom she once hoped for.
Willi NinjaHimself
Mother of the House of Ninja and the scene's great voguer, whose dancing career begins to take off during the filming.
Venus XtravaganzaHerself
A young trans woman of the House of Xtravaganza who dreams of a husband and of surgery, and is murdered before filming ends.
Angie XtravaganzaHerself
Mother of the House of Xtravaganza, who took Venus in and carries the film's last scenes as she takes in her death.
Why it matters
Paris Is Burning records a world built because the larger one would not have its people: Black and Latino gay men and trans women, many of them young and put out of their homes, who made families, a language and a stage for themselves in Harlem. Its words, reading, shade, voguing, realness, have since passed into everyday speech, and that is part of the argument around it. bell hooks asked whether a white filmmaker had turned the balls into a spectacle for white audiences, and several of the people in it felt they were paid too little for its success. It was added to the National Film Registry in 2016. Beneath the debate is what the film shows plainly: people who were refused a place in America's dream of glamour and money, rehearsing it anyway, with wit and precision, while poverty, AIDS and violence closed in. Almost all of them have since died.