Paris is Burning

🤩💖 Paris is Burning, dir. Jennie Livingston, 1990, USA, 78 min.
Friday, June 19, 2026, 1:30 PM, Castro Theatre
⚠️ homophobic/transphobic violence, racism

Paris is Burning

Frameline blurb: Category is… “whatever you want to be, you be.” Before the reading challenge on Drag Race, before Madonna’s “Vogue,” there was ballroom. Paris Is Burning shines a light on the late-80s ballroom culture of New York City, emerging from Black, Latin, and Trans communities.

Turning its participants into legendary LGBTQ+ icons and offering a dictionary of slang and one-liners that remain a crucial part of the queer lexicon, these ballroom superstars — including Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, Venux Xtravaganza, Dorian Corey, Octavia St. Laurent, to name a few — deconstruct race, class, and identity politics through intimate interviews, winding monologues, and sickening performances. Winner of the Audience Award at Frameline14 and still as vital, entertaining, and moving 35 years later, Jennie Livingston’s essential 1990 documentary is a profound record of the experiences, ambitions, and talent of an underrepresented yet commercialized culture — who have achieved cinema immortality thanks to this unforgettable masterpiece.

My take: You may have seen Paris is Burning before. I remember it from Frameline14, when I was still in grad school. I saw it again at Frameline 21 years later. You need to see it again. This is a full-on restoration of the original film, even better than the previous restoration. The impact of Paris is Burning on our culture is hard to overstate, bringing Ballroom onto a worldwide stage, with queens we truly feel like we got to know in a little over an hour, speaking directly about their lives and their experiences.

As long as you’re in the neighborhood, so to speak, you should also seek out last year’s I’m Your Venus, which explores the life and legacy of Venus Xtravaganza, who was murdered as Paris was in post-production. It’s a stirring tribute to an amazing larger-than-life personality.

• IMDb • Official website • Filmmaker • Instagram • Facebook: @ParisIsBurningMovie • preview • Wikipedia • Streaming on AppleTV+ •