ABSTRACT
Few independent documentaries by a first-time director have been the focus of as much academic inquiry as Paris Is Burning (1990). Over the past several decades, high-profile scholars including bell hooks, Judith Butler, and Jack Halberstam have used the film to discuss issues around race, class, sexuality, and gender. Directed by Jennie Livingston, the film depicts Black and Latinx drag balls in Harlem, New York City in the 1980s. Featuring interviews with members of rival “houses” who compete at the balls, the film has been credited with drawing attention to drag as well as voguing and throwing shade. Aspects of the film later inspired shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race and Pose. Incorporated into the US National Film Registry in 2016, Paris Is Burning is an important work in the American independent film canon that has remained extraordinarily generative within analyses of intersectionality, kinship, gender performativity, cultural appropriation, and trans studies.
