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Should you watch Paris Is Burning?

Who it’s good for, who it isn’t, and what’s in it. No ratings, no scores.

Paris Is Burning

Documentary · 1991

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, PARIS IS BURNING offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women — including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza.

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The sides of Paris Is Burning

  • Harlem ball houses competing for trophies
  • House mothers taking in young people with nowhere to go
  • Voguing, shade and reading, explained by the people who made them

Paris Is Burning is good for you if…

  • you want the ballroom scene from the people who built it, in their own words.
  • you want to spend an hour with Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey and Willi Ninja.
  • you want New York in the late 1980s as it was lived in Harlem.

Paris Is Burning is bad for you if…

  • you can't sit with the poverty, the AIDS years and the violence these lives carried.
  • you want something light, and the joy in it comes with real loss.

About: identity · chosen family · survival

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