--- title: "Paris Is Burning: the reviews" canonical: "https://film.one/film/paris-is-burning/reviews" title_page: "https://film.one/film/paris-is-burning" critics_score: 78 critics_reviews: 18 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Paris Is Burning (1991): what the critics said Critics' score 78 from 18 reviews: 16 positive, 2 mixed, 0 negative. Most critics like this film a good deal, and the agreement has held from its release to the present. The praise gathers around Jennie Livingston’s camera, which most reviews describe as curious and non-judgmental, letting the Harlem ball scene speak in its own idioms without turning anyone into a case study. Nearly every review singles out the participants themselves: their wit, their competing ideas of realness, and the chosen families they build. Several call it funny and heartbreaking in the same breath. The reservations are few and mild, and the spread is narrow. The Guardian is the coolest, finding the fashion dated and wishing for a re-edit with some account of what became of the participants. Paste reads it less as celebration than as a record of rejection and loss. Later reviews, at Eye for Film and Collider among them, raise the question of exploitation and the director’s outsider perspective, though both still recommend it. ## Little White Lies — Rahul Patel Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 16 September 2020. The critic celebrates the film's enduring place in queer cinema through its honest exploration of race, poverty and sexuality in New York's ballroom scene. It highlights the participants' wisdom, spirit and the creation of chosen families as sources of inspiration and hope. [Read the review](https://lwlies.com/queer-cinema/paris-is-burning-at-30) ## RogerEbert.com — Roger Ebert Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 9 August 1991. The documentary captures the voguing and ball culture of Harlem drag queens with intelligence and empathy, highlighting their creativity and the social commentary on status and outsider status. [Read the review](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/paris-is-burning-1991) ## Slant Magazine — Fernando F. Croce Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 10 September 2005. Livingston’s nonjudgmental camera accommodates contrasting views on 'realness' and performativity in the drag ball scene while depicting a familial world with its own rules, rituals, and idioms like voguing. The film structures contrasts between dreams and reality, ultimately offering a hopeful study of the search for personal wholeness despite a sad aftertaste from participants' deaths. [Read the review](https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/paris-is-burning/) ## The New Yorker — Terrence Rafferty Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 18 March 1991. A beautiful piece of documentary filmmaking that is lively, intelligent and exploratory, examining the rituals of this urban subculture without reducing its subjects to sociological symbols. [Read the review](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1991/03/25/1991-03-25-072-tny-cards-000142725) ## Empire — Patrick Peters Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 3 January 2007. Jennie Livingston's study freezes a fascinating moment in the late-80s Harlem drag ball scene, offering more than camp by providing a sobering insight into the aspirations of an excluded sub-class and their replacement families. It is a revealing snapshot of counterculture with an intriguing political subtext. [Read the review](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/paris-burning-review/) ## Los Angeles Times — Kenneth Turan Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 9 August 1991. An absorbing and seductive documentary that demonstrates how the ball world holds up a mirror to straight society, underlining the poignancy of the participants' dreams and the limited role models available. [Read the review](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-08-09-ca-35-story.html) ## Radio Times — Alan Jones Rating 4/5. The critic praises this brilliantly entertaining documentary as a rapturous mixture of high spirits, camp and pathos in its look at drag queens and transsexuals around the Harlem ball competitions. It describes an eye-opening, moving ode to desperate self-reinvention through an extended disco family. [Read the review](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-w8a7n5/paris-is-burning/) ## The AV Club — Noel Murray Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 21 September 2005. The film preserves a remarkable, exotic little world of New York drag ball culture at the end of the 1980s, with lively performances that enhance its rewatchability and examine how a group of outcasts made a home through ingenuity and exaggerated self-regard. The DVD release serves as an elegy to the 'legends' lost to HIV or violence, with the commentary adding context on what happened to the participants since filming. [Read the review](https://www.avclub.com/paris-is-burning-1798201049) ## The Independent Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 7 January 2007. The critic describes Paris Is Burning as a poignant documentary exploring the voguing balls in New York's black and Latino gay scene, noting how participants sought 'realness' and conventional middle-class lives through fancy dress. It is presented as fun yet heartbreaking. [Read the review](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/paris-is-burning-9nc-431151.html) ## The New York Times — Vincent Canby Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 13 March 1991. A very fine documentary that studies the lives of Harlem drag queens with the curiosity of a compassionate anthropologist, noting both the wit in their role-playing and the sadness in their aspirations. [Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/13/movies/review-film-aching-to-be-a-prima-donna-when-you-re-a-man.html) ## Evening Standard Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 10 April 2012. Jenny Livingstone's documentary observes and interviews New York drag queens competing in voguing balls, many from marginal lives involving prostitution and theft. The film is called sympathetic and clear-headed. [Read the review](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/all-dragged-up-nowhere-to-go-7391734.html) ## Time Out — Ben Walters Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 2 January 2007. The critic calls it a fascinating portrait of a complex, materially disadvantaged subculture structured around competitive aesthetic displays in the late-'80s New York black gay ball scene. It notes the aspirationalism and the way categories reflect a desire for mainstream acceptance. [Read the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/paris-is-burning) ## The Guardian Fi1m's normalised score 50/100 (inferred from the text). 5 January 2007. The re-release of Jennie Livingston’s low-budget documentary about New York’s gay club scene and drag balls holds up moderately well, though fashion dates quickly and a re-edit with historical context on participants’ fates would have helped. The film offers an affectionate critique of celebrity culture through the drag queens’ aping of fashion shows and awards rituals while longing to join the elite. [Read the review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2007/jan/05/documentary) ## /Film — Valerie Ettenhofer Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 27 June 2022. The piece celebrates the documentary as a vital, lively celebration of diverse queerness and ballroom culture, highlighting its honest portrayal of subjects' lives and its enduring resonance as a monument to queer resilience. [Read the review](https://www.slashfilm.com/907899/the-daily-stream-paris-is-burning-is-a-monument-to-queer-resilience/) ## The Wrap — Alonso Duralde Fi1m's normalised score 85/100 (inferred from the text). 25 February 2020. The critic highlights the documentary as a game-changer that has grown in influence over decades, widely referenced in later works like Pose and RuPaul’s Drag Race. It praises the film as a powerful, life-affirming portrait of Harlem’s drag-ball scene creating joy amid Reaganomics and the AIDS epidemic, noting the value of the Criterion Collection release with its extras. [Read the review](https://www.thewrap.com/whats-new-on-dvd-in-february-knives-out-the-nightingale-paris-is-burning-and-more/) ## Collider — Chris Sasaguay Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 19 January 2025. The critic presents the documentary as a dazzling, poignant, and influential landmark of queer cinema that celebrates Harlem ballroom culture while acknowledging its controversial legacy of exploitation and cultural appropriation. It singles out the stunning fashion runways, voguing battles, and the cast's resilience amid the AIDS crisis and inequality. [Read the review](https://collider.com/paris-is-burning-documentary/) ## Eye for Film — Jennie Kermode Fi1m's normalised score 80/100 (inferred from the text). 2 May 2018. Festival review. The critic praises the film's capture of ball culture's flair and resistance but notes it is controversial due to the director's perspective, missing nuance, and potential exploitation, yet calls it essential viewing for its influence and insight into the movement. [Read the review](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/paris-is-burning-1990-film-review-by-jennie-kermode) ## Paste — Shannon M. Houston Fi1m's normalised score 60/100 (inferred from the text). 7 November 2017. The critic reflects on the film's revelation of queer Black and Latino origins for much of contemporary culture and language, viewing it as a tragedy of rejection, loss, and ongoing oppression. It singles out the appropriation of terms like 'shade' and the broader failure to support the communities that birthed them. [Read the review](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/paris-is-burning/paris-is-still-burning-what-if-we-loved-black-quee) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/paris-is-burning.md