Paris Is Burning

Paris Is Burning is a 1991 American documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender communities involved in it. Some critics consider the film to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the "Golden Age" of New York City drag balls, and a thoughtful exploration of race, class, gender, and sexuality in America.

In 2016, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Livingston was a film student at New York University when she had a chance meeting in 1983 with a group of young gay men who were dancing and posing in Washington Square Park. Intrigued by their movements and the unusual slang they were using (she later realised that they were referring to the "categories" in the ball competitions), Livingston asked what they were doing, and was informed that they were voguing. Thinking that it might be a good subject for a pending university documentary project, Livingston asked how she could learn more, and the men suggested that she attend a ball, and recommended that she contact dancer Willi Ninja.

At the first ball she attended she met the then teenage Venus Xtravaganza, and she subsequently spent a lot of time talking with and learning about ball culture and voguing from Ninja, and researching the history of Harlem's gay and drag subculture. She attended and photographed many balls with her still camera but gradually came to realise that what she was seeing and hearing needed more, so she began filming the balls and doing on-camera interviews with key figures from the various "houses" that competed. Livingston initially raised about $250,000 to fund the production, but then had to raise an additional $150,000 to cover the cost of copyright clearances for the music that was being played over the PA as she filmed.

While the film was still in production, Livingston met British pop impresario Malcolm McLaren, who often visited New York and had become fascinated with vogue/ball scene. In early 1989 McLaren brought Livingston and leading voguer Willi Ninja to London, where Ninja contributed vocals to McLaren's new single and performed on the promotional music video, which Livingston directed. Livingston had also given McLaren a VHS copy of footage from the film, with permission to sample audio files from it. McLaren then gave the tape to his collaborators Mark Moore and William Orbit, who used numerous samples from the soundtrack for their remix of the song, which McLaren then decided to issue instead of the original track. The resulting single, "Deep in Vogue", became the first popular song to bring voguing to wide public attention (predating Madonna's "Vogue" by approximately nine months), topping the US dance chart at the end of July that year, as well as charting in the UK and Australia, and the music video was shown on music programs and music channels in all three countries.