Movies News
Update · Jennie Livingston’sPARIS IS BURNING
FRI/MON/THURS 1:00 3:00 5:30 7:10 9:30
SAT, June 15 1:25 3:05 7:25 9:10
SUN, June 16 1:25 5:35 7:15 8:55
TUE, June 18 1:00 3:00 5:30 7:10 9:30
WED, June 19 3:00 4:50 6:40 8:30
SAT, June 22 1:25 3:05 4:45 6:25 8:05 9:45
SUN, June 23 1:25 4:45 6:25 8:05 9:45
TUE, June 25 1:00 3:00 5:30 9:40
WED, June 26 12:30 3:50 5:30 7:10 9:30
Friday, June 14 – Thursday, June 27
TWO WEEKS
(1991) The 80s seen by means of the eyes of NYC’s African American and Latinx Harlem drag ball scene, an intimate portrait of rival vogue “houses,” from fierce contests for trophies, to accommodate moms providing sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans ladies together with Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza. Filmed by Livingston over seven years, Paris is Burning premiered at Update in 1991 for a blockbuster 6-month run. DCP Restoration. Approx. 71 min.
Remastered by the UCLA Television Archive together with Sundance Institute and Outfest UCLA. Preservation funded by Sundance Institute, Outfest UCLA and the Andrew J. Kuehn Jr. Foundation.
Presented with help from the R.G. Rifkind Foundation Endowment for Queer Cinema.
Reviews
“Queer culture’s revenge on the world that surrounds and excludes it.”
– Time Out
“Combines drama, sociology, culture and history into a powerful, passionate and entertaining package… Livingston fleshes out not just the cultural facts of the ball scene and its attitudes but, more significantly, the struggle for survival at its roots.”
– Karl Soehnlein, Out Week
“Loaded with ironies of the sort that encourage heavy-duty sociological analysis, because virtually every aspect of this community of underdogs imitates some perceived value of the white middle-class heterosexual society from which they feel excluded.”
– Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker
“Zeroing in on an obscure and outré corner of a subculture, Livingston’s film ends up shedding an extraordinary light on American culture as a whole.”
– David Ansen, Newsweek