Paris is burning

United States, 1990

Please note

Sorry, we don't have images or video for this item.

Source: Some information on this page may have been sourced as part of the 2023 Wikimedia Australia Partnership Projects grant, with the purpose of improving and expanding the use of Wikidata on our website. Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Read more about this project here.

Paris is Burning is the result of the five years film-maker Jennie Livingston spent amongst New York City’s black and Hispanic transvestite community. Often poor and homeless the young gay men and drag queens form “houses” which conduct dances and balls dedicated to vogueing: the celebration of fashion, style and beauty. This is a fascinating documentary which confronts the viewer with a blurring of traditional notions of gender and sexuality and which also celebrates sexual, ethnic and racial diversity and difference. Features a great soundtrack of house and funk music. Winner of Best Documentary at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival.

Content notification

Our collection comprises over 40,000 moving image works, acquired and catalogued between the 1940s and early 2000s. As a result, some items may reflect outdated, offensive and possibly harmful views and opinions. ACMI is working to identify and redress such usages.

Learn more about our collection and our collection policy here. If you come across harmful content on our website that you would like to report, let us know.

How to watch

This work has not been digitised and is currently unavailable to view online. It may be possible for approved reseachers to view onsite at ACMI.

Learn more about accessing our collection

Collection

In ACMI's collection

Credits

producer/director

Jennie Livingston

production company

Off-White Productions

Duration

01:40:00:00

Production places

United States

Production dates

1990

Collection metadata

ACMI Identifier

303223

Language

English

Audience classification

Subject categories

Agriculture, Business, Commerce & Industry → Fashion

Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → African Americans

Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → Hispanic Americans

Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → New York (N.Y.)

Crafts & Visual Arts → Fashion

Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → African Americans

Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Hispanic Americans

Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Homelessness

Family, Gender Identity, Relationships & Sexuality → Transvestites

Food, Health, Lifestyle, Medicine, Psychology & Safety → Fashion

Places → New York (N.Y.)

Sound/audio

Sound

Colour

Holdings

VHS; Access Print (Section 1)

Wikidata

Q7137311

Please note: this archive is an ongoing body of work. Sometimes the credit information (director, year etc) isn’t available so these fields may be left blank; we are progressively filling these in with further research.

Cite this work on Wikipedia

If you would like to cite this item, please use the following template: {{cite web |url=https://acmi.net.au/works/82089--paris-is-burning/ |title=Paris is burning |author=Australian Centre for the Moving Image |access-date=20 December 2024 |publisher=Australian Centre for the Moving Image}}