1018 Paris Is Burning

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swo17
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1018 Paris Is Burning

#1 Post by swo17 » Fri Nov 15, 2019 2:40 pm

Paris Is Burning

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Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City's African American and Latinx Harlem drag-ball scene. Made over seven years, Paris Is Burning offers an intimate portrait of rival fashion "houses," from fierce contests for trophies to house mothers offering sustenance in a world rampant with homophobia, transphobia, racism, AIDS, and poverty. Featuring legendary voguers, drag queens, and trans women—including Willi Ninja, Pepper LaBeija, Dorian Corey, and Venus Xtravaganza—Paris Is Burning brings it, celebrating the joy of movement, the force of eloquence, and the draw of community.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Jennie Livingston, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between Livingston, ball community members Sol Pendavis and Freddie Pendavis, and filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris
• Over an hour of never-before-seen outtakes
• Audio commentary from 2005, featuring Livingston, ball community members Freddie Pendavis and Willi Ninja, and film editor Jonathan Oppenheim
• Episode of The Joan Rivers Show from 1991, featuring Livingston and ball community members Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Freddie Pendavis, and Willi Ninja
• Trailer
• More!

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senseabove
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#2 Post by senseabove » Fri Nov 15, 2019 4:35 pm

Hoping the "More!" includes "• Here just have another few hours of never-before-seen outtakes" since there are reportedly 70 hours of it.

I'd also be surprised if they didn't include a more recent look at the contemporary ball scene, whether that's just some interviews with this generation's participants or one of a handful of recent documentaries about it, like Kiki.

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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#3 Post by _shadow_ » Sat Nov 16, 2019 2:24 am

There were 47 minutes of outtakes on the DVD, so I'm curious how "never-before-seen" the outtakes on the BD will be.

britcom68

Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#4 Post by britcom68 » Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:41 pm

If the *more* does not include some sort of interview with either Billy Porter or RuPaul (or any of the RuPaul's Drag Race contestants) then clearly Criterion is keeping things too academic. I am in complete agreement others online that putting this film in contrast to not only the Court circuit today but the more mainstreaming of drag itself lately would be a most welcomed supplement to this release. Sometimes the best interview is not with a scholar but with a person who is not merely a fan of the film but a direct beneficiary to its scope. In this case I doubt Criterion staff went around asking drag performers if they wanted to sit down for an interview, but they are the very first-hand knowledgeable participants that would be best to truly discuss this film and its relevance and contrast with the contemporary scene.

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Blutarsky
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#5 Post by Blutarsky » Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:10 pm

britcom68 wrote:
Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:41 pm
If the *more* does not include some sort of interview with either Billy Porter or RuPaul (or any of the RuPaul's Drag Race contestants) then clearly Criterion is keeping things too academic. I am in complete agreement others online that putting this film in contrast to not only the Court circuit today but the more mainstreaming of drag itself lately would be a most welcomed supplement to this release. Sometimes the best interview is not with a scholar but with a person who is not merely a fan of the film but a direct beneficiary to its scope. In this case I doubt Criterion staff went around asking drag performers if they wanted to sit down for an interview, but they are the very first-hand knowledgeable participants that would be best to truly discuss this film and its relevance and contrast with the contemporary scene.
I would love a sit down panel with queens who are very academic in their knowledge of drag. Heck even a super cut of Aja playing Pepper in the Snatch Game. Rupaul, Nina West, Aja, Raja. That’d be one of the best extras the Collection would provide.
A las, this is only a dream:(

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swo17
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#6 Post by swo17 » Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:37 pm

I imagine you mean a different Aja than this

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Roscoe
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#7 Post by Roscoe » Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:59 pm

Blutarsky wrote:
Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:10 pm
I would love a sit down panel with queens who are very academic in their knowledge of drag. Heck even a super cut of Aja playing Pepper in the Snatch Game. Rupaul, Nina West, Aja, Raja. That’d be one of the best extras the Collection would provide.
A las, this is only a dream:(
I think you mean Aja playing Crystal Labeija in RuPaul's Snatch Game, recreating the great meltdown at the end of THE QUEEN, which would make an interesting extra on its own.

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Blutarsky
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#8 Post by Blutarsky » Sat Nov 16, 2019 5:36 pm

Roscoe wrote:
Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:59 pm
Blutarsky wrote:
Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:10 pm
I would love a sit down panel with queens who are very academic in their knowledge of drag. Heck even a super cut of Aja playing Pepper in the Snatch Game. Rupaul, Nina West, Aja, Raja. That’d be one of the best extras the Collection would provide.
A las, this is only a dream:(
I think you mean Aja playing Crystal Labeija in RuPaul's Snatch Game, recreating the great meltdown at the end of THE QUEEN, which would make an interesting extra on its own.
Thank you for clarifying. I have failed as a fan of Drag Race. On another note, this is one of the highlights of the month for me!

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R0lf
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#9 Post by R0lf » Sun Nov 17, 2019 3:02 am

britcom68 wrote:
Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:41 pm
In this case I doubt Criterion staff went around asking drag performers if they wanted to sit down for an interview, but they are the very first-hand knowledgeable participants that would be best to truly discuss this film and its relevance and contrast with the contemporary scene.
But the listing seems to make clear that’s what they did?

The conversation and commentary list that they’re both with “ball community members” and since no one from the movie is still alive they’re going to be contemporary. Then the Joan Rivers Show extra will contrast that nicely with something that’s relevant to the period.

britcom68

Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#10 Post by britcom68 » Sun Nov 17, 2019 8:07 am

R0lf wrote:
Sun Nov 17, 2019 3:02 am
britcom68 wrote:
Sat Nov 16, 2019 3:41 pm
In this case I doubt Criterion staff went around asking drag performers if they wanted to sit down for an interview, but they are the very first-hand knowledgeable participants that would be best to truly discuss this film and its relevance and contrast with the contemporary scene.
But the listing seems to make clear that’s what they did?

The conversation and commentary list that they’re both with “ball community members” and since no one from the movie is still alive they’re going to be contemporary. Then the Joan Rivers Show extra will contrast that nicely with something that’s relevant to the period.
Sorry for any confusion but my concern is that the phrasing of the supplement listings make it sound as if Criterion is just going back to those persons who were part of the film and not interviewing current drag performers, Court judges, circuit participants and the like who are active in 2019 but came into this world only long after the time-period of the film itself.

Not to say that the late 80s/early 90s are not worth dwelling on (having survived those decades myself I would be the first to want to analyse more those peculiar times) but it would strongly be to Criterion's credit that they realize that interviewing drag artists just from this film and its specific era does not do justice to placing the film and its era in historical context. To appreciate the past, one needs to compare it to the present. Drag and the greater-LGBTQ community in 2019 has progressed in ways never foreseen or anticipated by late 80s/90s participants. For example, there are multiple Emmy wins for RuPaul's Drag Race now, a show which is televised/streamed worldwide and has an active following even among non-club/circuit denizens and even from non-LGBTQ persons. Billy Porter has not merely won an Emmy, Grammy and Tony for drag performances over his career, but he and Harvey Firestein performed in drag during the upcoming Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade (and the public backlash was short-lived at best and, more importantly, non-violent without any political repercussions). Even though "Paris" does not place drag in a political arena even marginally, it is amazing that by 2019 there have been drag performers who have been sought out actively and publicly for events with multiple political candidates running for offices; and drag seminars and read-a-longs at libraries are growing public in acceptance at events across the US. Heck, just for fun I looked just now and found that here in Columbus, Ohio our recently re-elected mayor, a man so popular he ran unopposed in a city of over one-million, Mayor Ginther has a twitter following one-tenth the size of one of our local drag performers, Nina West. (This is not to suggest that if Nina West ran for office she would win, but rather to illustrate that drag is hardly relegated to occasional ball courts or a few bars these days as it was in the era of "Paris"). Hell, for a sense of public acceptance of drag as art and no longer just condemned as a so-called backroom perversion, recall that when Ronald Emmerich's film "Stonewall" was released it in 2015, it was immediately publicly protested- not by shocked social conservatives, but by LGBTQ groups, alongside with multiple articles all publicizing that film's deliberate whitewashing of the Stonewall riots and the film's re-writing of history to erase the fact that it was the arrest of drag performers that which started the riots.

If someone just wanted to focus geographically on one place and not look at North American society as a whole, one could just look at my home state, Iowa. Although it is a state that is considered a homogeneous "flyover," with a now majority-elected Republican state government, it is still the official kickoff for the US Presidential race with its Caucuses. Over the past several months there have been at least three separate acts of Pride-flag burning in the state. What is amazing to see is that the vandals of the flag burning are not just prosecuted- and prosecuted using anti-hate crime laws- but that the media coverage is rightfully changed from the era of the film, no longer suggesting that the LGBTQ flag-flying venues were somehow asking for it or flaunting their sexuality, or hesitant to talk about drag when discussing these acts of vandalism. The most recent flag burning was outside a drag venue where several of the Democratic Party candidates for President had campaigned to packed crowds, and again, those events too were written about in the media and not just swept under the rug.

What is separating these acts from the 80s/90s-era is that there is no sense of the desperate struggle of AIDS hovering over all these events, no closeted seediness in the background of the LGBTQ venues, no sense that drag is attached at the hip to an impoverished isolated pocket of people far outside the mainstream, and no urgent sense that everything could come crashing down at any moment from the Reagan/Bush Conservatives wielding public opinion/backlash to re-write laws, coupled with media reportage dripping with hesitancy in its tone. I am not alone when I say that these are important cultural changes for the better.

Just to contrast drag communities from late 80s/90s to today as a supplementary for this release would be educating and necessary in an age when people are more likely than ever not to dwell on the past.

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R0lf
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#11 Post by R0lf » Sun Nov 17, 2019 9:07 am

Sol Pendavis is already the link into the modern shows you’re talking about - being a consultant on POSE.

Also, running a RuPaul link is a dufficult balancing act given how much PARIS IS BURNING leans into, not just drag, but trans identity and black trans identity. DRAG RACE is only very superficially based on it and there are counter arguments that the way trans identity and drag as a whole is dialled back in our modern culture is actually, contrarily, highly regressive to the raw and powerful form it has here.

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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#12 Post by Lowry_Sam » Sun Nov 17, 2019 2:18 pm

I saw both Paris is Burning and Tongues Untied (which is getting released by BFI in March-hopefully his other films come out too, like the complete works in a Criterion box) at the 1990 San Francisco Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (I don't think they included Transgender in the title in 1990) and am ecstatic that the 2 most memorable films from that (or any LGBTQ film fest that I've attended for that matter) are getting upgraded to blu-ray. It would be nice if either release contains (in booklet or in interviews) more on the context of the era and the academic discourse that surrounded the 2. The BFI's release notes mention the controversy that surrounded Tongues Untied, which was picked up by PBS' POV program. Paris Is Burning was also swept up in the public funding of the arts (and the NEA's funding of lesbian & gay works like this & Robert Mapplethorpe's art in particular) & the use of that as a political rallying cry among conservatives to rile up their base.

This film also became a touchstone for academics/feminists like bell hooks & Judith Butler as it coincided with the growth of cultural studies. They criticized the film because it was made by a white Jewish woman who was documenting a hidden subculture for the entertainment of a (largely) white straight audience, which has given rise to a multitude of discussions of "cultural appropriation." When the rights were bought by Miramax, Jenni Olson distributed a portion of the money to some of the subjects, but others were then not satisfied & then sued (and lost because they had signed waivers). When the subject was raised, she noted that documentary subjects are not normally paid. This film came out at the same time that Madonna released her Vogue single & video (Fincher, 1990) and both were cited by academics as examples of how whites (ie.record executives, publishers, directors, ec.) capitalize on black art forms from which they retain most of the financial benefit.

Feminists also criticized the subjects of the film, continuing a criticism of drag queens from feminists in the 70s, namely that the drag queens that this film presents are using a highly artificial model of femininity to judge how "real" one is (in contrast to drag queens who's exaggeration of make-up & dress can be seen as a send up of this highly stylized notion of femininity). Many of the critics of this film would go on to praise Tongues Untied for being an expression of black gay men that was actually made by black gay men. However, Essex Hemphill, one of the black gay voices in Tongues Untied, praised Paris Is Burning in The Guardian for its honesty in presenting its subject. He stated that "To pose is to reach for power while simultaneously holding real powerlessness at bay."

So the film touches upon a number of issues as relevant today as ever as the internet has allowed for much broader distribution of images & ideas: ethnography & how best to document a subject, what responsibilities does a documentary film maker have to the subjects of the film/do they owe their subjects anything?, what is cultural appropriation & is it necessarily a bad thing? changing gender norms & media representation. I really wished Criterion's extras cover some of this, as the original Miramax dvd was a bit lacking. Ru Paul could be a good interview/commentor as the film definitely paved the way for his Supermodel hit 3 years later & so he probably has a better handle on the era than many. However, I'd be more interested in hearing academics & critics in the area of anthropology & sociology discussing the many issues surrounding documentary film making, as well as, better historical/sociological accounting of the time than in listening to some contestants from Ru Paul's Drag Show talk about the film (though that would probably increase sales more).

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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#13 Post by senseabove » Sun Nov 17, 2019 5:25 pm

I've said it elsewhere I'm sure but I'll say it again: Lucas Hilderbrand's Paris is Burning: A Queer Film Classic is an excellent, thorough, and in-depth book covering the movie's production and distribution, its popular, critical, and academic reception, its influence, and the moral complexities of all of those elements... I think it's truly one of the best "all about one movie from a dozen angles" books I've read, with an enthusiastic, personal touch that, while it defends the movie against criticisms like those of hooks and Butler, does so in good faith. Hilderbrand's is another name I'd love to see in the extras list.

britcom68

Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#14 Post by britcom68 » Sun Dec 22, 2019 8:13 am

The More! suggested in the release announcement has been updated to include the following:
PLUS: An essay by filmmaker Michelle Parkerson and a 1991 review by poet and activist Essex Hemphill

Looks like a good package overall, but I certainly would love to know if Criterion even attempted to approach RuPaul for any interview or written comments. RuPaul has referenced this film so many times on Drag Race I cannot imagine he, or at least some contestants, would not want to contribute to the lease. And I still say Fran Lebowitz moderating a discussion between drag artists is a fantastic missed opportunity.

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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#15 Post by senseabove » Tue Feb 25, 2020 1:25 pm

Has there not been a single review of this disc yet and it's out today?

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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#16 Post by cdnchris » Tue Feb 25, 2020 1:44 pm

I've really fallen behind on some things and didn't prioritize appropriately, so that's my excuse (I finally just finished the Zeman set and it's out today as well). I still have to sit through the commentary on this one, but if you're concerned about image quality and the like I'll just say: it looks really fucking good.

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senseabove
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#17 Post by senseabove » Tue Feb 25, 2020 2:08 pm

Wasn't targeted at any reviewer in particular! And I saw the restoration screened last year, so not worried about that. It really was just surprise that not a single one has made it out before street date. Looking forward to your review whenever it does get posted!

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senseabove
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#18 Post by senseabove » Sat Feb 29, 2020 3:47 pm

Well, at the very least I'm pleased to confirm that "Over an hour of never-before-seen outtakes" is very nearly two hours (1:51), and composed of legitimately unseen outtakes (unlike the DVD realease's outtakes, which were mostly slightly extended/unedited versions of scenes from the movie or what seemed to be recordings of editing/footage review sessions).

And they start with the buried gems early on, such as Pepper's response to Livingston egging him on to brag some: "But I'm not vain... It's vanity to say that I'm—"*pausing to facetiously look around the room and make sure everyone is listening*"—the living legend of all living legends."

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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#19 Post by Gregory » Sat Feb 29, 2020 4:19 pm

Slant review: "earns 10s across the board." Rating 4.5/5. :-k

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R0lf
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#20 Post by R0lf » Thu Dec 17, 2020 4:25 am

FYI the link to this thread from the index of Criterion titles is incorrectly labelled as PARIS BELONGS TO US.

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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#21 Post by jbeall » Sun Feb 07, 2021 12:36 am

R0lf wrote:
Thu Dec 17, 2020 4:25 am
FYI the link to this thread from the index of Criterion titles is incorrectly labelled as PARIS BELONGS TO US.
Just watched it--phenomenal documentary, btw--and this is still the case. Mods?

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swo17
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Re: 1018 Paris Is Burning

#22 Post by swo17 » Sun Feb 07, 2021 12:46 am

Fixed

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