Product Details

• Actors: Carmen and Brooke, Avis Pendavis, Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, André Christian
• Format: Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• VHS Release Date: February 25, 1997
• Run Time: 78 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304326289
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #152,307 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com essential video

Paris Is Burning closes with two neon-lit boys holding each other on the streets of Harlem. One looks into the camera and asks, "So this is New York City and what the gay lifestyle is all about--right?" This documentary takes an honest, humorous, and surprisingly poignant peek into one of America's overlooked subcultures: the world of the urban drag queen. It's a parallel dimension of bizarre beauty, where "houses" vie like gangs for turf and reputation ... only instead of street-fighting, they vogue their way down makeshift catwalks in competitive "balls." The only rule of the ballroom: be real.

In surprisingly candid interviews, you discover the grace, strength, and humor it takes to be gay, black, and poor in a straight, rich, white world. You'll meet young transsexual "cover girls," street hustlers saving up for the big operation, and aging drag divas reminiscing about the bygone days of sequins, feathers, and Marilyn Monroe.

Made in the late 1980s, this fashion-conscious film shows its age less than you'd expect. It's still a great watch for anyone interested in the whole range of humanity, or anyone who's ever been an outsider, desperately wanting something the world hides out of reach. --Grant Balfour

From The New Yorker

Jennie Livingston's documentary about gay black and Latino men who compete in drag balls is a beautiful piece of work-lively, intelligent, exploratory. The drag queens we see here seem to be holding up a mirror to the world of the empowered as they see it in movies, TV shows, and magazines. In the ballroom, some present themselves as elegant, glamorous women in designer outfits, and walk with the hip-swinging slouch of runway models, while others adopt more mundane personas: college students (of both sexes); military men; Wall Street businessmen; aristocrats at play, dressed for yachting or riding to hounds. The criteria by which all these turns are judged is verisimilitude-"realness." The material is almost too rich, too suggestive. Everything about the ball culture signifies so blatantly and so promiscuously that the movie induces a kind of semiotic daze. Livingston is smart enough not to reduce her subjects to the sum of their possible meanings, perhaps because she realizes that the way the drag performers manipulate image and fetishes and the iconography of popular culture is for many of them a sophisticated form of humor. The most self-aware of the gay men in this picture revel in the ironies of their social and sexual identities, and Livingston makes us appreciate the comic grace and the strange wisdom of that approach. Like all the best documentary filmmakers, she does her subjects the honor of allowing them to retain some of their mystery. Edited by Jonathan Oppenheim. -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

93 of 95 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Defiance and Pathos, March 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Paris Is Burning [VHS] (VHS Tape)

In the beginning of this film, one of the commentators says that he was told that he has two strikes against him: he is black and male. But in addition to that, he has a third strike: he's gay. "You're going to have to be stronger than you ever imagined," he is told. "Paris is Burning" is a documentary about gay black and Hispanic men who are tranvestites (men who dress in women's clothing) or transsexuals (people who have The Operation and become, biologically, the opposite sex). They come together and hold "balls" in which they compete in categories like "Executive Realness," "Opulence," and "the Boy Who Robbed You a Few Minutes before Arriving at the Ball." Although several of these categories seem like a satire of society at large, we are told by elder stateswoman/cynic/voice of reason Dorian Corey that "this isn't a parody or take-off. They are very seriously trying to pass as what they are dressing up as." The miracle of "Paris is Burning" is that director Jennie Livingston takes a subject that could have very easily become a freak show and allows the people in it their humanity. We learn their views of homosexuality, men, women, their hopes, their disappointments, their dreams. [...]
This is not a film for everyone. There are shots in this movie of nude transsexuals. It is definitely not for children, and if you have a problem with homosexuality, then this movie isn't for you, either. But if you do see this movie you'll realize "Paris is Burning" isn't really about men wearing women's clothes, it's about a group of people who are routinely marginalized and put down by society at large, and what they do to get a sense of community in their lives.
I've watched this movie four times since it was released in 1991, because it says so many things: it's a commentary about materialism in our culture, about gender roles, about rich and poor people, about the media and what it celebrates, about fame and adulation. "Paris is Burning" is one of the most humane, and one of the saddest, movies I've ever seen.

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant time capsule, November 29, 2005

By 

William Sills "Clay Sills" (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Paris Is Burning (DVD)

It's hard to believe that the goings on in Paris Is Burning is almost 20 years old. I saw it in a Midtown Atlanta theater in 1992, and was just blown away by it. The whole notion that people scrabble for a bare existence 99% of their time so they can shine for 1% sounds cute or depressing or trite, depending on your current level of treacle versus cynicism... But once you see people honest to God living that way, that patronizing distance is gone. A really good film. Really, really good.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ANY SHOPLIFTER CAN GET A LABEL..., October 28, 2005

By 

Gregory J. Rivera "labeija" (NYC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paris Is Burning (DVD)

I first saw this movie in 1991 during my first week at Hampshire College at some theater in Northampton Massachussetts. I was about 17 and had just come out as a latino gay male. I cannot begin to tell you how this movie impacted my life. Paris is Burning has given be comic material and one-liners for well over a decade. Regardless of class, race, or gender, my circle of friends can recite at least one brilliant line from the movie. The DVD has new outtakes and some choice commentary by the very wise and articulate Dorian Corey. Dorian discusses the lack of imagination that exists among today's youth as a result of their reliance on popular media for entertainment. Furthermore, the "ball scene" is a parody of the social paradigm, where roles are played and an outfit, designer label, or the ability to "pass", brings the marginalized individual one step closer to the "American Dream", if only for that fleeting moment on the ballroom floor. "At one time or another we have all lusted to walk a ballroom floor".