Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.

Now on the BBC World Service, Witness History with me Beth and Head.

In 1990, an award-winning US documentary film was released,

showing a glimpse of a thriving underground drag scene in New York.

The film Paris's Burning explored the Black and Latin X gay and trans ballroom scene of the 1980s and the

LGBT Q Plus communities at the heart of them. Forum events combined drag, people dressing as another gender, dance, lip-sinking and modeling,

and were regular events in New York in the 1980s. The film begins with

drag queen Peppler Bezia walking the ballroom floor in an elaborate head-to-toe

gold outfit complete with feathered hat and long black silk gloves.

As a New Yorker and as a queer person and as a storyteller, I thought it was really, really important to tell the story of people reinventing a world,

the reason being that they weren't safe in the larger world.

Racism and homophobia were rife in the United States.

So the ballroom culture provided a safe space for black and Latin X

LGBTQ plus people to express themselves freely.

You go in there and you feel, you feel 100% right as being gay.

That's not what it's like in the world.

Jenny Livingston directed the film Paris is burning,

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