Paris Is Burning: Jennie Livingston

Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning could serve as a crash course for every 101 college course on LGBTQ+ intersectionality with regards to race, class, gender, and culture. Though tight in its official purview--the golden age of New York City balls--it's a stunning glance into the birth of fashion, behavior, lingo, dance, and style that would dominate not only LGBTQ+ communities but eventually mainstream culture as well. As a straight while male, I'm obviously the least qualified person on the planet to talk about its merits. But I can say that the film affected me deeply on a human level. Here are groups of marginalized human beings who, in the face of oppression I can't begin to imagine, created authentic families together, created a brand new culture all of their own. I read somewhere that gay culture essentially had to recreate itself from scratch in the wake of the 1980s AIDS crisis. Paris is Burning is a heart-breaking yet soul-uplifting portrait of just some of the people and culture we lost in that inferno.

10/10