Paris Is Burning

New York City, 1987. The Saturday night fever of the 1970s is over, now replaced by frenetic 'balls' attended by drag queens and transsexuals that require hours of preparation: costumes, make-up, wigs, choreography and posing. In 1990, the year of the film's release, Madonna sang "strike a pose!" in her song Vogue, appropriating the New York African-American practice of voguing which involved parading and posing like supermodels in front of a panel of judges and a cheering audience.

But beyond performance and entertainment, there is also the question of class, about appropriating elements of the American culture of luxury and celebrity, where all the icons, from Marlene Dietrich to Cindy Crawford, are white.

This documentary, conceived as an ethnographic immersion, does not attempt to hide the poverty and social distress that these performances conceal. Instead, it reveals what can sometimes be the harsh reality of life as a transsexual or drag queen in New York.

Carine Bernasconi (CEC, Unil)