For sheer density of vibrant life, few films compare with Paris Is Burning. Released in 1990, Jennie Livingston’s documentary dives into the gay ball culture of Harlem, New York, in the late 1980s, getting up close and personal with a number of the scene’s key individuals, who hold forth on their lives and art with the otherworldly self-possession of superstars, against a backdrop of intersected communities (poor, queer, and trans) ravaged by a raging AIDS crisis and eight years of pernicious Reagan-era neglect.
The result is a searing cultural documentary that explodes off the screen like a party, thanks primarily to the extensive, exhilarating footage of Harlem drag balls, where black and Latino gay men walk the runway in combination fashion shows/attitude battles to compete in a variety of costume-based categories…
