Jennie Livingston | |
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 Livingston at the Here! Network/Outfest Queer Brunch during the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. | |
| Born | February 24, 1962 |
| Education | Yale University (BA) |
| Occupation | Film director |
Jennie Livingston (born February 24, 1962) is an American director best known for the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning . [1]
Livingston was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Los Angeles, where her family moved when she was two years old. She is the youngest of three siblings, with two older brothers. [2] Her mother was the poet, children's book author and anthologist Myra Cohn Livingston. [3] Her father Richard Livingston was an accountant and author of the children's book The Hunkendunkens. Her brother Jonas was a music executive [4] at Geffen Records and at MCA Records, [5] and directed the video for Edie Brickell & New Bohemians' 1988 hit song What I Am . [6] She has another brother, Joshua. [7]
Livingston attended Beverly Hills High School [8] and graduated from Yale University in 1983, where she studied photography, drawing, and painting with a minor in English Literature. One of her teachers at Yale was the photographer Tod Papageorge. Livingston took a summer filmmaking class at New York University in 1984. [9]
Livingston moved to New York City in 1985, and was an activist with the AIDS activist group ACT UP. She is an out lesbian and lives in Brooklyn. [10] She is Jewish. [11]
Livingston's father died of heart disease in 1990, her mother and her grandmother both died of cancer within months of each other in 1996. Two years later, her uncle Alan J. Pakula died in a car accident, [12] and Livingston's brother Jonas died suddenly in early 2000. [13] The loss of her family and her experience of grief led her to start work on her film Earth Camp One. [13]
She worked in the art department on the 1987 film Orphans ; director Alan J. Pakula, her uncle, encouraged her to make her first film. [14]
Livingston's documentary about a New York gay and transgender Black and Latin ball culture won the 1991 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and was a key film both in the emerging American independent film movement and in the nascent New Queer Cinema. Paris is Burning was one of Miramax Films' earliest successes, and helped pave the way for a current crop of commercially successful documentary films. It was one of the best films of 1991 according to The Los Angeles Times , Time Magazine , The Washington Post , NPR and New York Magazine . In 2016, it was included in the Film Archive at the Library of Congress, along with 24 other films including The Birds , The Lion King , and East of Eden . When the film premiered it was positively reviewed by critics including Essex Hemphill, writing for The Guardian and Michelle Parkerson, writing for The Black Film Review . Favorable reviews appeared in The New Yorker , Time Magazine , The Village Voice , Newsweek , and elsewhere. Critical reviews came, most notably, from essayist bell hooks and film critic B. Ruby Rich.
The film has been a source of inspiration for filmmakers, television shows, LGBTQ communities, and queer activists. It's taught at universities in film, dance, cultural studies, and in multiple other academic disciplines. For Stonewall 40, the New York activist group FIERCE! screened the film on the New York piers where much of the film was shot. In 2018, Pratt Institute's Black Lives Matter student group kicked off their weekend of events with a screening of the film and discussion. The film inspired the creation of the FX show Pose , and its quotes and people and spirit infuse the show.
The main speakers in Paris is Burning include Octavia St Laurent, Carmen Xtravaganza, Brooke Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja, Dorian Corey, Junior Labeija, Venus Xtravaganza, Freddie Pendavis, Sol Pendavis, Kim Pendavis, and Pepper Labeija. The collaborative team that made Paris is Burning and that made it possible include executive producers Madison Davis Lacy and Nigel Finch, editor Jonathan Oppenheim, director of photography Paul Gibson, co-producer Barry Swimar, associate producer Claire Goodman, production manager Natalie Hill, and many others.
Initially released in 1991, the film continues to screen worldwide at festivals, universities, museums, and community groups, and attracts a multi-generational audience. In 2017, New York Times critic Wesley Morris included Paris is Burning in a piece for the Times' pullout children's section, "12 Films To See Before You Turn 13." Said Morris, "Jennie Livingston spent years observing competing enclaves of drag queens. Seeing her documentary as soon as possible means you can spend the rest of your life having its sense of humanity amuse, surprise, and devastate you, over and over."
Two of Livingston's short films, Hotheads and Who's the Top?, explore queer topics. Hotheads, a 1993 documentary created through the AIDS research-friendly Red Hot Organization, explores two comedians' responses to violence against women: cartoonist Diane Dimassa, and writer/performer Reno. Hotheads was shown on MTV and KQED and released on Polygram Video as part of Red Hot's No Alternative compilation.
Who's the Top?, Livingston's first dramatic short film, premiered at Berlin International Film Festival in 2005, and stars Marin Hinkle, Shelly Mars, and Steve Buscemi. [9] [15] The film, a lesbian sex comedy with musical numbers, also features 24 Broadway dancers choreographed by Broadway choreographer John Carrafa. The film screened at more than 150 film festivals on nearly every continent, including theatrical runs at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and London's Institute of Contemporary Arts.
Through the Ice is a digital short, commissioned in 2005 for public television station WNET-New York, about the accidental drowning of Miguel Flores in Prospect Park, Brooklyn and about the dog-walkers who tried to save him; the film was also seen at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2011, Livingston set up a Kickstarter campaign to support her film project Earth Camp One. A non-fiction feature-length film, it is a memoir/essay about grief, loss, and a hippie summer camp in the 1970s, also a broader exploration of how Americans view loss and impermanence, including collective political loss, and queer identity in relation to loss. Livingston first started working on the project in 2000, [16] wanting to explore the topics of loss and grief after having lost her father, mother, grandfather, uncle, and brother between 1990 and 2000. [13] The film's status has been "post-production" on imdb.com since December 2014. [17]
Livingston has also been developing Prenzlauer Berg, an ensemble episodic project set in the art worlds of New York and East Berlin in the late 1980s. [18]
In 2011, Livingston directed a video for Elton John's show The Million Dollar Piano at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas; the piece is a series of black and white moving-image portraits of a variety of New Yorkers that accompanies the song "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters". The show ran for 7 years.
Livingston has taught and lectured worldwide, including teaching courses at Yale, Brooklyn College, and Connecticut College. Fellowships have included the Guggenheim Foundation, the Getty Center, the German Academic Exchange (DAAD), The MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Since 2018, Livingston has been a consulting producer on the FX tv drama series Pose , which is "heavily inspired" by her documentary Paris Is Burning. [19] [20] [21]
"New Queer Cinema" is a term first coined by the academic B. Ruby Rich in Sight & Sound magazine in 1992 to define and describe a movement in queer-themed independent filmmaking in the early 1990s.
Vogue, or voguing, is a highly stylized, modern house dance originating in the late 1980s that evolved out of the Harlem ballroom scene of the 1960s.
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 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.
William Roscoe Leake, better known as Willi Ninja, was an American dancer and choreographer known for his appearance in the documentary film Paris Is Burning.
Venus Xtravaganza was an American transgender performer. She came to national attention after her appearance in Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary film Paris Is Burning, in which her life as a trans woman forms one of the film's several story arcs.
The Ballroom Scene is an African-American and Latino underground LGBTQ+ subculture that originated in New York City. Beginning in the late 20th century, Black and Latino drag queens organized their own pageants in opposition to racism experienced in established drag queen pageant circuits. Though racially integrated for the participants, the judges of these circuits were mostly white people. While the initial establishment of Ballroom mimicked these drag queen pageants, the inclusion of gay men and trans women would transform the Ballroom scene into what it is today: a multitude of categories in which all LGBTQ+ people may participate. Attendees "walk" these categories for trophies and cash prizes. Most participants in Ballroom belong to groups known as "houses", where chosen families of friends form relationships and communities separate from their families of origin, from which they may be estranged.
Angie Xtravaganza was a co-founder and Mother of the House of Xtravaganza. A prominent transgender performer in New York City's gay ball culture, Xtravanganza featured in the acclaimed 1990 documentary film Paris is Burning.
Dorian Corey was an American drag performer and fashion designer. She appeared in Wigstock and was featured in Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning.
Pepper LaBeija was an American drag queen and fashion designer. LaBeija was known as "the last remaining queen of the Harlem drag balls".
How Do I Look is a 2006 American documentary directed by Wolfgang Busch. The film chronicles ball culture in Harlem and Philadelphia over a ten-year period.
Danni Xtravaganza was a founding member of the House of Xtravaganza, the first primarily Latino house in the underground Harlem ball culture.
Founded in 1982, the House of Xtravaganza is one of the most publicly recognized "houses" to emerge from the New York City underground ballroom scene and among the longest continuously active. House of Xtravaganza members and the collective group is recognized for their cultural influence in the areas of dance, music, visual arts, nightlife, fashion, and community activism. House of Xtravaganza members continue to be featured in popular media and travel the world as ambassadors of voguing and the ballroom scene.
Nigel Lucius Graeme Finch was an English film director and filmmaker whose career influenced the growth of British gay cinema.
"Kiki" is a term which started in ballroom culture, and later popularized in LGBT+ culture currently, is loosely defined as a gathering of friends for the purpose of gossiping and chit-chat, and later made more famous in the song "Let's Have a Kiki" by the Scissor Sisters.
Jose Gutierez Xtravaganza is a dancer, choreographer, recording artist, New York City nightlife personality and the current father of the House of Xtravaganza. He is one of the most widely recognized personalities to emerge from the NYC ballroom scene of the 1980s. He is best known for his work with Madonna.
Paris Dupree was an American drag performer and documentary participant featured in Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning, which was named after Dupree's annual ball.
Strike a Pose is a Belgian-Dutch documentary film, which premiered in the Panorama section of the 2016 Berlinale. Directed by Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan, the film profiles the dancers who performed with Madonna on her Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990.
Kia Michelle Benbow is an American fine artist. Her most well known series, 24, is a sociopolitical commentary on the effects of growing up as a young woman of color with HIV. She is a former Mother of the Royal House of LaBeija.
Hector Xtravaganza was a member of the House of Xtravaganza and well-known figure in the NYC ballroom life, entertainer, fashion stylist, and public advocate for HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ+ organizations.
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