... crackles because of its subjects.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 16, 2025

This beautiful film is about surviving on the fringe—and looking amazing while doing it.

| Jun 16, 2023

Makes smashing use of the documentary form: it shares with the audience its knowledge of a glittering American subculture... that is little known to most of us.

| Original Score: 4/4 | May 9, 2023

It’s a documentary that demands to be seen.

| Mar 3, 2023

Jennie Livingston’s time capsule look of LGBT balls is an acknowledged classic, inclusively incisive in its portrait of a NYC diaspora of a marginalized community...

| Jan 24, 2023

...it is most importantly a story about the power of chosen family — the solace that can come simply by finding other people in the world that can relate to your struggles and will love you regardless.

| Oct 31, 2022

In this gritty but celebratory documentary produced and directed by Lesbian filmmaker Jennie Livingston, it is not the fashions but the characters that stay with the viewer.

| May 23, 2022

It is strong, sardonically funny, sometimes shattering stuff.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 17, 2021

Jennie Livingston's seminal documentary film shines a spotlight on New York City's ball culture, a place where African-American and Latino LGBTQ people could live out their high-glamour fantasies.

| May 10, 2021

Paris is Burning is still an important film 30 years after its release - a snapshot of a specific time and place that humanizes its subjects and allows those of us in a place of privilege to understand them better.

| Nov 11, 2020

A scintillating example of how art can serve life without compromising its objective of adding meaning to our journey.

| May 28, 2020

Not since Andy Warhol's The Chelsea Girls have I been so taken and fascinated by such a gallery of real-life, stunningly etched characters.

| May 19, 2020

Half sad, half exuberant.

| May 19, 2020

The earnestness of the competition is what holds this film together.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 19, 2020

There is a lot of common sense and natural wit behind the role-playing. Yet there is also a terrible sadness in the testimony.

| May 19, 2020

[The film intercuts] ball scenes with interviews with the participants in less hectic, more reflective moments. It is those personal, humanizing moments, much more than the hectic, eye-catching hubbub of performance, that truly linger in the mind.

| May 19, 2020

If the wit, glamour and mind-boggling outfits of Paris Is Burning are disarming, not far beneath the film's surface is an immensely moving quality.

| May 19, 2020

If all you know about Voguing comes from Madonna, this spirited and heartbreaking documentary from first-time filmmaker Jennie Livingston will be an eyeopener.

| May 19, 2020

Although the film has its dark moments, Paris Is Burning is mostly upbeat, and the overall message of the movie is heartening and humane.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 19, 2020

Livingston's film shows how fantasy can mitigate the sadness of life.

| May 18, 2020