Paris is on fire

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Movie
German title Paris is on fire
Original title Paris is burning
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1990
length 71 minutes
Rod
Director Jennie Livingston
script Jennie Livingston
production Jennie Livingston
camera Paul Gibson
cut Jonathan Oppenheim

Paris is burning (Original title: Paris Is Burning ) is an American documentary from 1990. The film shows the Ballroom Culture in New York City in the 1980s and is an important historical document of the gay - and transgender community and the African-American and Latino - Community of its time.

content

The film shows scenes from different balls in Harlem , which are organized as competitions in numerous different categories. The participants walk through the ballroom like a catwalk and are judged by jurors on the basis of the “realness” of their drag performances, their dance skills or the beauty of their clothes. The winners receive trophies.

Between these scenes, the film consists of interviews with participants or visitors to these competitions as well as scenes from their everyday lives. The interviewees explain important terms, slang expressions and concepts of ballroom culture. They explain why they are entering or attending the competitions. Some of the interviewees tell of the ballroom culture as a way out of a homophobic and poverty-ridden everyday life. Even with little money you can find recognition at a ball if you have style and charisma. Interviewees include Dorian Corey , Pepper LaBeija , Venus Xtravaganza , Octavia St. Laurent and Angie Xtravaganza.

The film deals with the elective relationships of the ballroom culture. Some of the interviewees were rejected by their families because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The ball and drag culture takes up this directly by establishing alternative queer relationships. The ball participants organize themselves in “houses”, which are named after well-known fashion brands or the most famous members of the house. The house is headed by a “mother” who takes care of her “children”; in the case of poverty, often with a place to sleep and food.

In some scenes, Paris is Burning shows and explains the origins of the dance form voguing , which has its own category for balls. Willi Ninja , one of the most prominent voguing dancers, is interviewed in the film.

The transsexual Venus Xtravaganza worked as a sex worker to get clothes for balls to buy, and in 1988, prior to finishing the shooting of the film, was murdered. In the film, friends of hers talk about the murder and violence that is present in the New York transgender community.

Emergence

In 1985, director Jennie Livingston saw and spoke to some people doing voguing dance in Washington Square Park . They invited them to attend a ball to learn to understand the dance. In the following two years she attended balls, took photos, got to know participants and visitors and also got to know herself better in her own queer identity. Eventually she began her film work, which lasted from 1987 to 1989.

The film itself had a budget of approximately $ 250,000; the rights to the music appearing in the film cost an additional $ 175,000. Livingston explained that the process of raising the budget for the film had been very slow due to skepticism about the film concept: commercial film producers did not want to support the film because of its subject matter, and homosexual producers often also did not due to racist reservations about the black gay scene. Funding ultimately came from New York City's public arts funding programs and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others .

The title Paris is Burning , according to Livingston, refers to an annual ball hosted by drag queen Paris DuPree, as well as the desire to become famous and "make Paris burn."

Staging

The film uses subtitles to represent terms that are explained in the following scenes through interviews and images (for example "House", "legendary", "reading", "shade" or "mother"). Other subtitles contain the names of interview partners, who are presented below. The form of subtitles as used by the film is associated with ethnographic films.

The comparison between the different generations of ball participants is represented by their placement in the film and their editing. The detailed interviews with the two older participants Dorian Corey and Pepper LaBeija are at the beginning of the film. The interviews with the two of them are interrupted by ball scenes and numerous cuts that switch back and forth between the two interviewees. Both of them look back nostalgically at the earlier ball culture and are more critical of the norms that are tried to achieve on balls than the younger participants. The interviews with the two younger participants Octavia St. Laurent and Venus Xtravaganza, on the other hand, are towards the end of the film and are similarly cut into one another. Both of the younger participants are transgender and want gender reassignment surgery; they dream of the realization of a female heteronorm that they have internalized through the balls. Passing as women could bring them fame, fortune, marriage, and children. Through the subsequent failure, including the murder of Venus Xtravaganza, Livingston also wants to suggest a failure of over-identification with the norms of ball culture.

The background of the film consists of songs that were used as background music for the competitions at the actual balls. The music covers different genres, but, according to Escobedo Shepherd, revolves around the themes of joy, effort and innovation.

Themes and motifs

Paris is Burning is often included in a stream of new queer approaches in independent film in the early 1990s, the New Queer Cinema . Daniel T. Contreras, however, gives the film a special role in the current; "It offered a more sobering and artistically complicated vision of queer urban life than that offered by many of the other New Queer Cinema filmmakers" . The film is one of the few in New Queer Cinema that deals with race in a direct and complex way .

None of those who appear in the film are visibly white ; the interviewees are black or Latinos . Her longings and dreams, which are based on white popular culture (like the television series The Denver Clan ) and fashion, are in contrast to her actual life. Those who perform at the balls are concerned with “realness” in the categories, ie the best possible approximation of the standard according to which the assessment is made; the performers want to appear as straight, white, rich or feminine as possible. The film reflects this contrast by alternating interviews with scenes of white, middle-class New York everyday life (e.g. white passers-by on Park Avenue ). It is often pointed out that these scenes are just as inauthentic or authentic as the scenes of the balls themselves; The white passers-by also took the stage, “thus demonstrating that everyone essentially is in drag” .

The film deals with the drag queen culture and how it deals with gender roles and addresses complex issues within the culture that reveal the intersectionality of race, gender and class . Some of the performers are transsexual and combine their desire for gender reassignment treatment with their desire for wealth and advancement in a racist society; Venus Xtravaganza says something like: "I want to be a rich white girl" .

The fashion sense portrayed in the film shows an unusual reinterpretation by People of Color of the taste in fashion and art defined by white supremacy . Contreras states: "This is one of the missed joys of the film - the courageous, inventive creativity of queers of color in the most abject of circumstances" .

reception

Publication and Success

A short version of the film was broadcast on the BBC's Arena in April 1990 . The film in a 58-minute long version was first shown on video in June 1990 at the LGBT film festival Frameline in the Castro Theater in San Francisco and the New Festival of Gay and Lesbian Film in New York. In this version, the credits were missing because there was no money. By the time the film was shown at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival , Livingston and film editor Jonathan Oppenheim created a 71-minute distribution copy of the film and seven-minute credits. The screening at the Sundance Film Festival would mark the breakthrough for the film. The filmmakers offered the film Miramax for distribution, but initially declined. When the film was then shown on its own on March 13, 1991 in the New York Film Forum and had the highest number of viewers per cinema in Variety magazine for two weeks , Miramax took the film into distribution. Paris is Burning had its US cinema release on August 9, 1991 . At major screenings of the film, donations for the homosexual movement and awareness-raising for AIDS were collected, including on August 7, 1991 in Los Angeles.

The film grossed around $ 4 million at the box office and was considered an outstanding financial success for a low-budget documentary. All of the film's surviving interviewees, with the exception of Dorian Corey and Willi Ninja, hired attorneys in order to potentially get a share of the film's financial success in a legal dispute. Paris DuPree, whose ball gives the film its title, was not interviewed for the film, but wanted to sue Livingston for $ 40 million for rights not being obtained. The litigation did not go ahead as Livingston had signed waivers from all parties involved. In 1991, she paid a total of $ 55,000 to 13 of those who appeared in the film, depending on the length of the film's appearances.

The film was released on September 23, 1992 in a 76-minute version on VHS . An epilogue tells what has become of some of the people in the film in the meantime.

Awards

The film won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival and the Teddy Award for best documentary at the 1991 Berlinale . Other awards the film won include:

The film was not nominated for " Best Documentary " at the Oscars , which was controversial and contributed to a change in voting rights in the category in 1995 as the existing regulation made it easier for older, retired academics to vote.

Film criticism and feminist theory

The film split the film critics, depending on whether critics perceived the visualization of the film as radical and novel or as conservative, since it glorified the longing of the interviewees to fit into the white consumer society .

“The film looks behind the masks and costumes and discovers dreams, longings and desires, expressed by self-promoters who express themselves in front of the camera without prejudice. A lively and authentic insight into a subculture. "

- Lexicon of international film

Paris is Burning was named Best Documentary Film in 1990 and 1991 by several critics' associations in the USA ; in addition to the National Society of Film Critics, those of Boston, Kansas City, Los Angeles and New York.

In feminist theory, the film was controversial. bell hooks criticized Is Paris Burning? the colonial, apparently ethnographic view of Livingston. This reduces the ballroom culture to a spectacle for the white viewer. The point of view is not revealed as that of a white person, but staged as universally valid. Judith Butler took the film as the starting point for parts of her book The Body of Weight .

effect

The film was instrumental in increasing interest in the voguing dance form. Even before the film was released, Livingston showed British music producer Malcolm McLaren excerpts from the film. Together with Willi Ninja, who appeared in the film, MacLaren brought out the dance single Deep in Vogue in 1990 , which made it to number 1 on the US dance charts. Willi Ninja took part in the singing and in the music video. Madonna further popularized the dance form with her globally successful song Vogue , which was released about a month before the film premiere.

The music in the film had an impact on the electronic music scene until the 2010s. DJs Prince Language , Big Freedia , Del Marquis (guitarist of the Scissor Sisters ), Hercules and Love Affair and Light Asylum , among others, name the film as an important inspiration for their work. The queer hip-hopper Zebra Katz created an homage to ball culture and Paris is Burning with the single Ima Read . Vjuan Allure created his own genre with Ballroom Beatz , which is influenced by the music of the film.

The famous drag queen RuPaul used quotes from Paris is Burning in her music and also used several elements of the film in her talent show RuPaul's Drag Race .

The film Kiki (2016) by the Swedish director Sara Jordenö follows on from Paris is Burning and shows the developments in the New York ballroom scene.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reena Jana: Jennie Livingston. In: Bomb. 1991, accessed October 8, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b Saeed Jones: Filmmaker Jennie Livingston On Life And Loss After “Paris Is Burning”. In: BuzzFeed LGBT. March 23, 2013, accessed October 8, 2016 .
  3. ^ A b Eugene Hernandez: 5 Questions for Jennie Livingston, Director of "Paris Is Burning" and "Who's The Top?" In: IndieWire. August 5, 2005, accessed October 8, 2016 .
  4. ↑ a b c Paris Is Burning. In: For Movies. Retrieved October 8, 2016 .
  5. ↑ a b Jesse Green: Paris Has Burned. In: New York Times. April 18, 1993, Retrieved October 8, 2016 .
  6. ↑ Paris is Burning cast on The Joan Rivers Show: Part Three. In: YouTube. Retrieved October 8, 2016 .
  7. ^ Paris Is Burning (1990). Company credits. In: IMDb. Retrieved October 8, 2016 .
  8. ↑ Paris is Burning cast on The Joan Rivers Show: Part One. In: YouTube. Retrieved October 8, 2016 .
  9. ↑ a b c Lauren Levitt: Reality Realness: Paris is Burning and RuPaul's Drag Race. (No longer available online.) In: Interventions. November 7, 2013, archived from the original on October 10, 2016 ; accessed on October 9, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / interventionsjournal.net
  10. ↑ a b Julianne Escobedo Shepherd: The Music And Meaning Of 'Paris Is Burning'. In: NPR Music. April 30, 2012, accessed October 8, 2016 .
  11. ↑ a b Griffin Benshoff: Queer Images: A History of Gay and Lesbian Film in America . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005, pp. 239 .
  12. ^ Nathan Smith: Twenty-five years of New Queer Cinema. February 5, 2015, accessed October 8, 2016 .
  13. ↑ a b c d e Daniel T. Contreras: New Queer Cinema: Spectacle, Race, Utopia . In: Michele Aaron (Ed.): New Queer Cinema. A Critical Reader . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2004, pp. 119-127 ( qmul.ac.uk [PDF]).
  14. ^ William Grimes: Oscar Rules Change For Documentaries. In: New York Times. July 13, 1995, accessed October 8, 2016 .
  15. ↑ Paris is on fire. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 27, 2018 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  16. ↑ bell hooks: Is Paris Burning? In: Black Looks. Race and Representations . South End Press ( pica.org [PDF]).
  17. ↑ Jasmin İhraç: Keep it real. Voguing and the Archives. Retrieved October 8, 2016 .
  18. ↑ George Haggerty: Encyclopedia of Gay Histories and Cultures . Routledge, 2013, pp. 937 .
  19. ↑ Reality Realness: Paris is Burning and RuPaul's Drag Race ( Memento of the original from October 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / interventionsjournal.net
  20. ^ Teddy Award Winners 2016. In: Teddy Award. February 20, 2016, accessed October 8, 2016 .