Hello, and welcome to Queer as Fiction, where we talk about queer historical media.

I'm Jason.

And I'm Eli.

And today we're talking about Jenny Livingston's 1990 documentary, Paris is Burning.

Before we start, we have a few content warnings for this episode.

This episode contains mentions of racism, transphobia, homophobia, the AIDS epidemic,

murder and family rejection.

It also contains the use of outdated language to refer to both queer people and people

of colour, in quotes.

If any of that sounds like something you don't want to listen to, please feel free to check

out one of our other episodes.

So I wanted to start this episode by explaining what is Paris's burning?

Because I feel like a lot of our older listeners probably have a pretty good understanding of this

documentary, but some very young listeners may not have seen it. I certainly hadn't, and had you

seen it before we researched this episode, Eli? No, but I had a pirated version of it on my hard drive for like a decade.

I love queer things and have ADHD.

Reasonable.

So I was aware of it, but I had not actually seen it.

Yeah, I think I'd heard the name, but didn't know what it was.

So Paris is Burning is a documentary about the ball culture scene of New York in the 1980s,

prominently featuring the African American and Latin American members of that community,

many of whom are gay and or trans.

...