Paris Is Burning

Claimed by many to be one of the best – often THE best – queer documentary of all time, it actually took me until now to finally watch “Paris Is Burning”. I feel like I’ll probably get some snark for it and make a few enemies, but this queer documentary was just “meh” for me. As a documentary attempting to create a time capsule for the 1980’s ball scene in NYC – it gets a solid score on that front! Many phrases and elements of the modern gay lexicon come directly from the ball scene, so it was quite interesting to go more in depth into their origins. And director Jennie Livingston captures an oft-overlooked or even unknown yet crucial part of queer culture in a way that is honest and insightful. Yet it’s not entirely a positive story, especially when viewing this queer documentary today, over thirty years later knowing that many of the documentary’s key people are now gone.

However, my biggest issue with this queer documentary is that it’s too informative – but doesn’t really have a flow towards anything beyond just capturing the time. There is a LOT of terms, explanations, and more within this rather short documentary. Not that that’s a bad thing, for it’s quite an important piece of queer history! Unfortunately, watching “Paris Is Burning” simply didn’t meet the hyped up expectations I had for a queer documentary which many claim to be the best.