“Paris Is Burning" at the Figge Art Museum -- June 18.
Thursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second Street, Davenport IA
Presented as the third in a month-long series of screenings held in celebration of Pride Month, 1990's seminal, critically documentary Paris Is Burning lauded enjoys a June 18 screening at the Figge Art Museum, this special series made possible by the Art Bridges Foundation in conjunction with the Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibition now on view at the Davenport venue.
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 a period of seven years, producer/director Jennie Livingston's 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 – 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."
Upon its release, Paris Is Burning received overwhelmingly positive reviews from a number of mainstream and independent presses, remarkable at that time for a film on the LGBT community, given the enormous legal and cultural obstacles that they faced then. The film holds a score of 98-percent "freshness" on Rotten Tomatoes, with the website's critical consensus reading: "Paris Is Burning dives into the '80s transgender subculture, with the understated camera allowing this world to flourish and the people to speak (and dance) for themselves." Terrence Rafferty of The New Yorker, meanwhile, said the film was "a beautiful piece of work – lively, intelligent, exploratory ... . Everything about Paris Is Burning signifies so blatantly and so promiscuously that our formulations – our neatly paired theses and antitheses – multiply faster than we can keep track of them. What's wonderful about the picture is that Livingston is smart enough not to reduce her subjects to the sum of their possible meanings."
Paris Is Burning will be screened in Davenport's John Deere Auditorium on June 18, the 6 p.m. showing preceded by live music in the Figge Cafe from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., and the event is hosted by Mary Francis, Clock, Inc. Program and Innovation Lead. Admission is free, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7804 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
