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

The film is a comprehensive, if dated, tour through a subculture which, thanks to the ministrations of Madonna, has long since passed into the semi- mainstream.

| May 18, 2020

A rough-edged, talking- heads documentary, directed with skill if not polish by Jennie Livingston, that has found a topic almost unbelievably rich in cultural paradoxes and interpretive possibilities.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 18, 2020

Wildly entertaining, deeply humanitarian and fundamentally educational.

Full Review | May 18, 2020

The way that [director Jennie Livingstone] looks at the subculture and just lets them tell their own stories is just so wonderful.

| Oct 1, 2019

Truly remarkable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 2, 2019

One emerges from this film not only with a new vocabulary and a fresh way of viewing the straight world but with a bracing object lesson in understanding what society "role models" are all about.

| Mar 31, 2016

A poignant, heartfelt tribute to a vibrant New York subculture and its flamboyant acolytes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 9, 2007

[Paris Is Burning] was much admired when it came out in 1990. It holds up moderately for re-release now.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 6, 2007

A revealing snapshot of an American counterculture whose political subtext is as intriguing as its camp content.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2007

A fascinating portrait of a complex, materially disadvantaged subculture structured around intensely competitive aesthetic displays later plundered for a Madonna video.

| Jun 24, 2006

The beauty of the film is Livingston's nonjudgmental, accommodating camera.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2005

[A] touching and funny eye-opener of a documentary.

| Jan 1, 2000

For the people in Paris Is Burning, dreaming is a refuge, their true home. Livingston's movie is a map of their private geography, a moving topography of dreams.

| Jan 1, 2000

As much a movie about class, race, and sexual orientation as anything you've ever seen, Paris is Burning is deceptively simple on its surface, but by the end you'll find yourself devastated by its take on the American dream.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2000