Pioneers of Queer Cinema: Paris is Burning Q&A

hello hello all right i'm here to introduce our wonderful moderator today um this is her full name miss peppermint everyone's favorite flavor miss peppermint is a trailblazing actress singer dj reality star and activist who defies limitations a long time key figure in queer nightlife peppermint star rose thanks to her smashing success as the first out trans contestant in rupaul's drag race where she finished as a runner-up in one of the series most talked about finales soon after her talent led her to become the first trans woman to originally to originate a principal role on broadway in the hit musical head over heels she serves on the board of glaad and is the aclu's artist ambassador for transgender justice recent projects include an appearance on ryan murphy's emmy award winning series pose a recurring role on the cbs series god friended me and an upcoming role on the new fox scripted drama deputy please join me in welcoming our moderator for tonight miss peppermint [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] thank you hello hi well wasn't that fantastic i'm talking about the walk no just get it obviously the films uh this is gonna be so fantastic and this is such a treat now obviously after hearing my bio i have nothing to do with this film except for being an absolute die hard fan and so it's such a wonderful experience to be up here on stage introducing who i'm about to introduce so i want you all to give it up for the people who whose masterpiece you just witnessed i'm gonna do it in order okay i'm gonna change this a little bit they have an extensive international production exp they have extensive international production experience in countries such as argentina australia the czech republic france germany hungary india's new zealand spain south africa thailand and the united kingdom and have published a strong have established a strong reputation in the world of commercials continuing to produce spots and campaigns for the world's most prestigious brands they began she began her film career as production manager on this fabulous documentary paris is burning and is a native of the republic of trinidad and tobago yes yes yes a trinity and a graduate a graduate of new york university's tisch school of the arts i give you natalie g hill [Music] for time's sake because we know we all know what it looks like for somebody to walk down the steps we'll keep it going uh he's an artist a humanitarian and is one of a trio of creative consultants for the television series the award-winning and groundbreaking television series pose outside of his work on paris's burning he has appeared in strays with vin diesel wig stock with rupaul and off broadway in the play of the ball holds an associate degree in hospitality management a bachelor's degree in sociology and unfinished master's degree in education a cancer survivor he is currently doing his doing work as a background performer please put your hands together for freddie lee pandavas [Applause] he began in the new york city ballroom scene during the 1980s as a member of the house of omni eventually joining the house of pandavas under legendary mother ava spandar pendavas he appeared as both narrator and on-screen commentator in the legendary documentary paris is burning and he is the cur is the current grandfather of the house of pendavas most recently he worked as a consultant for the groundbreaking television series pose featuring the largest and pose of course featured the largest cast of both transgender and lgbt actors to ever be featured in a regular tv series he had he served his country in the united states armed forces retiring as captain in 2012 captain in 2012. you thought i was going to say something else uh he holds degrees from metropolitan college in new york city and has taught public speaking at the lawson center a part of the gay pardon me has taught public speaking at the lawson center and a part of the gay men's health crisis please put your hands together for saul williams [Applause] you better come on with that coat i didn't see that earlier you didn't bring that when we were talking about them shoes backstage you left that out of the side okay and last but most certainly not least uh their first film was paris burning in 1991 and the film won a sundance grand jury prize and was on several 1991 top 10 uh best film of the year lists in 2016 it was included in the film registry at the library of congress darling official and in 2021 it was included in in an excerpt in the new in the new academy museum they wrote and directed three original shorts who's on top in 2005 through the ice in 2005 as well and hot heads in 1993. their work there for higher works include directing a projected piece for elton john's stage show and directing an episode of pose [Laughter] they taught at yale brooklyn college and connecticut college and have worked as a speaker and educator worldwide they are currently competing completing a non-fiction i was like competing all right they are currently completing a non-fiction feature earth camp one they are also developing a fiction fiction and hybrid projects for film and television of course i'm talking about the filmmaker themselves jenny livingston all right welcome oh we got our water in a can yes hey shut up now look y'all we're gonna later on we're gonna open it up to questions so i want you to go ahead and get your minds going if you if we answer something that you were going to ask then you don't have to ask it but just in case get it ready all right here we that's the go so well hello hi [Laughter] so well okay this is uh have any of you seen each other since 30 years ago 30 okay me and saul we well i've noticed also i was 16 years old and we've been friends ever since um so we see each other like every every month two months something like that yeah okay okay so we see each other pretty quickly i have not seen them since the movie 1991 that was like 31 years ago oh my god excuse my she's me 31 years ago jenny i've seen a few years ago okay fantastic yeah yeah we always see jenny yeah yeah yeah well now we are seeing them live and in color right oh think we got more lights thank you uh together and this is fantastic now we got a lot to dig in and we got some limited time so we're gonna get right kicking into this uh got a couple questions for you um and i wanna i wanna just throw out first of all the this film i would be remiss to begin a panel up you know talking about the film and speaking with each of you without acknowledging the most obvious is that it's such a seminal piece of culture and it it really speaks to and spoke to me and resonated with the world i think and i is the queerest blackest domino that really started a domino effect that that just ripples throughout american culture american film and television now uh you know by way of ballroom culture and queer culture and now on to in other countries there's people i never thought i'd see people in ireland voguing the house down yes and so with so much so much cultural impact that i think we it's just like it will be paying off forever as long as we can hear and see and take in images this masterpiece and your images and what you put together and what you helped produce are going to be paying off for generations even they won't even know it and so that being said i know that you didn't know what you were what you were starting so what was it for you jenny that's that what was there a moment and i don't know this i really want to know was there one moment that you what was the decision that you said i need to capture this and bring this together what had you been exposed to what club had you hung out at where did you go what was it well i mean the genesis was the very beginning right was you know i was trained as a photographer and i was trained in the way where you go into the world and you see what's going on in the world and you get turned on and galvanized and excited you know about what's in the world so i was in washington square park and i was just you know new to the city taking a little summer film class you know but i went around with my still camera and there were these guys who were voguing i didn't know that's what they were doing but i said may i photograph you they said yes and they just wanted to be photographed and i you know was interested in how they moved and i said well what are you doing and they said well we're voguing it's like uh what's that i said it was a dance and if you want to see more of it go to a ball so then i went to a ball with a little wind-up black and white film camera that we had in the summer class a bolex is what it was called wind-up film camera and a friend took sound and that was my first ball you know it was it was what would now be called a kiki ball it was like a little daytime you know affair at the at the community center i met venus that was the first time i met venus but then i went to meet willie because those guys in the park said if you wanted me to voguer you know go me woolly and so i used to hang out with willie at june liberta's dance studio with archie burnett and willie and these guys they had a a dance troupe called breed of motion and then i started going to the balls taking still pictures but then after i went and i began to meet people and listen to people and listen to the eloquence and the shade and the wit plus the movement plus the costuming plus all the identities that were being explored and it was such a comment on america and on identity and i'm a young queer person who doesn't really quite know that i'm queer so you know there's a thing with my own identity and my own gender you know that's being sparked but it was really mostly about just talking to people and hearing what you all had to say and just feeling like this is a great comment on you know how we form our identities in the u.s you know who gets left out who gets let in and how people form resilience you know amid struggle and it just seemed like such a great comment for a movie and then it was a whole journey to do that and we are grateful for that what did so how long was that period of just getting to know folks and going to take pictures how two years two years and is that included in this other seven year span of of the life of this like how long did it take to film this uh well i would say so i started to shoot when i could and take a lot of audio and i'd go to people's homes and do interviews and so that i started and a lot of photographs the first shoot was um february of 86. natalie was there and it was at the elks lodge of the paris burning ball so the idea was to shoot some footage make a little trailer and then convince people you know to give us money and i just want to say this was in the day for those of you who know technology and don't know technology there was no you know phone where you could shoot there there was no video cameras no digital cameras so you had to raise enough money to hire the guy with a fifty thousand dollar film camera that it cost 150 every 10 minutes just to shoot not including developing so you had to go out and raise money uh you know to even make a little film wow okay and so for the two of you did you what was going through your mind the first time i mean you obviously already had met them you'd met jenny and before you started filming right and so oh you hadn't okay so you you you were not one of the people who had established a relationship with jenny before actual shooting not yet okay and so when you were approached what was going through your mind because again you you had explained jenny that it was a different time we didn't have all these things that we have now like the internet and phone and social media and just like the the notion of filming ourselves is so as as natural as getting on to an instagram story today but what was what did that mean for you in that moment did you think this is just going to be something that you know some filmmaking people want to see and or did you think did you did it occur to you that this would carry out past the community what was that like for both of you you first i had not oh i had no idea how far it was going to go i basically didn't know what i was doing uh when i first when i went to paris burning i was coming from the airport to pick up the keys for my wife to go home oh sh and she was a big idiot yes she was in the audience and when i walked by jenny filmed me walking by in uniform that was how military got into the ballrooms right are you serious you just wanted to go pick up some keys that's how it happened and then i left i went home and after that they said that lady is looking for you so so then somebody gave her my phone number she came to my house and she interviewed me in my house with my wife and she put it on the couch right next to you yeah okay i was like there's somebody on the couch like this yeah that's how that happened so i wasn't familiar but that was the first time i ever walked into a ballroom and i said that's grandfather's at paris to free wall in uniform trying to get home wow so from that point on i was the open eyes to military and that's how i got into the ballroom but they don't allowed me to walk once or twice and after that i was on a microphone for 10 years so i never got the benefit of doing all the i did my walking when i got a chance but most of the time i was on the microphone but so then did you think that you were going to be a film star i didn't think i was going to be in a ball all right okay so you weren't even thinking about it no i'm the boss now so i'm good okay okay what about you freddie honey oh well um kim kim pendovis um took me to the wall and um as far as it goes he heard from avis that oh it's going to be the same thing that um crystal went through with um being filmed yes so um i heard that but i still said you know what let's why not give it a chance and um that was when we filmed that was when the day you came over um you came to the house and filmed and caught came on the machine and uh that was it um i really didn't know i was i was i remember i was laughing and the original screening when we screened it at nyu kim kim marvin peter a couple of others always saying there goes that queen again there goes that queen again every time i popped up once on on the film they just kept making fun of me but i just i just i loved it i enjoyed it and i i i enjoyed it even today looking at it did you know that you had captured the did you know that you had contributed to something that felt so um did it resonate with you the way that you the way that you think it might resonate with everyone else now did it resonate with you when you watched it that first time we're like okay that's cute that's us and we look good you did a good job or were you like whoa that was good like what was your reaction no um i kept getting there goes that queen again but besides that i kept getting don't let it blow up your head do not be grounded no you still gonna take out the garbage you still gonna make up your bed you better watch these kids so it was more of a grounding thing for me where i wasn't able to quote unquote blow up or have any real um concrete thoughts about it because um it was just me being me and because of that it was funny i met someone and um they said they'd seen it and they were eight years old and they said they would have they they would be my husband as soon as they grew up they went to the village and looked for me and everything else and even today i i me and then we still um are in contact and um that's it so it's just a wonderful thing because that especially resonated with me in my heart very deeply you know anybody who tells me that i seen it when i was so young and it helped me be able to be strong in myself and understand who i am and love who i am and be able to go forward it just makes me feel fabulous oh that's so beautiful all right darling there goes that queen again natalie so the exp i mean i can't even imagine at some point this went from we didn't know what this was going to be we don't have enough money to put it together let's just see if we can get some pictures some audio to making a film and so at what like how did you come on board first of all and then second of all what the hell was it like trying to be a production manager and coordinate i i mean you go to a ball if you've been to a ball y'all you better clear your schedule you ain't getting out until around five years in the morning whatever time you think you get whatever so what was that like well let's start with the fact that i had no idea what a production manager was okay but i was trying to scam four credits for my from nyu so i took it okay okay so i took it you were the right person for the film so i i took an internship and i figured you know i get four credits and then i saw this company black and white tv blah blah blah drag queen public and i was like this sounds really great and then i met jenny and i was saying tonight the first time she made me do transcriptions first of all and the first time i put on the headset to listen to the stories i was blown away and it was that was it i just stayed and then some we started shooting i don't know where the money came from and then it got a tiny little bit of money but we're out there shooting and it was just doing it and they would ask for things and like trying to figure out how to do it and i had no idea how to do it but we did it do this do that you know prepared me for my job now okay so obviously just going back to this because i want to get a really good idea of this the relationships that you had started when you before you actually started filming obviously benefited being able to enter the spaces and make the film i would imagine and so how long how much time was spent in production versus post-production sure i mean until we got so what happened was the way we finally were able to shoot not just the first that first ball and like a couple other little shoots and a lot of audio was i had a friend who was an intern at wnyc which was at that time it was the city public station and he was making our little trailers you know that we were going out to apply for grants with and his boss said uh what are you you know doing what are you taping over there and she's like oh i'm making my friends trail well can i look at it she looked at it and she really liked it and she showed it to the head of the station it was madison davis lacey was one of the producers of eyes on the prize he had directed a film about hattie mcdaniel and he looked at the trailer and he was like oh this is really interesting called me in for a meeting said you know uh what are you doing and i was like well i'm trying to make kind of a short film it was like what would you do if you could do anything well i think it would be a feature and he basically said well i'll give you half so that was like you know a executive produce you know that's angel yeah an angel but also like he saw a young filmmaker with a vision and he saw the world of the balls i mean he was a africa he is an african-american straight male but he said this is my world you know this is a culture i understand even though i'm not gay and i'm not trans and he got it and that's really you know what you need as a young filmmaker as any filmmaker you know people who they you know they appreciate your vision and that's why the arts are so important so we anyway so we had shot a little bit he said go summer of 87. natalie comes on board as production manager we filmed those balls i mean we've done the paris's burning ball you you guys weren't there but then we were on the pier we were in people's homes we were in more balls and that was about six weeks five weeks six weeks of shooting we got that and then we needed two years later we needed to do a little follow-up unfortunately tragically venus had died venus had been murdered willie had was succeeding he was traveling all over we needed to show you know the ketchup so in 89 we did a little more shooting we shot the love ball which was kind of the ball worlds beginning to cross over and then we were done with our cut 90 19 90. so that's the trajectory okay yeah it's about four years with a little tiny break in between right yes seven years if you count all this stuff and then finishing you know and then going from as we were discussing you know going from a film that ends with dorian's say saying it and it goes real high hooray for you two we needed a credit sequence and we got that just before sundance which was january of 1991 okay so now we know the time the time frame um so for freddie and saul oh i already asked that so i'm i'm just flying through these questions oh my gosh um okay so so you you were just coming to the the ball and just walking through my happenstance and was so fierce at doing it now there's a whole category now um but what was your what was your connection either at a distance or in some way to the folks in ballroom before that because you must have known somebody to get they had your keys well why were your keys there okay i was in the military i was stationed in germany and my wife used to hang with gay guys to keep them cheating that's what it was when i came home to surprise her they said she had to ball and haul them so i'm like okay a ball what the hell's the ball so there's that plate to help plus by the time i got oh by the time i got from from the airport to the ballroom to go pick up my keys i seen i want to get my teeth they filmed me going across and that's how that got in and then when i got my keys i left after that i heard from jenny to do the joke so you but you you your wife had gone to balls before yeah and so you were you she had all her gay friends and you oh yeah i didn't know i didn't know her friends because i was going for seven years okay so you this was just a surprise okay brand new world a whole new world uh i think when i do um when i do interviews and talks now one of the main questions that people ask in relation to drag doing drag and rupaul's track my experience of rupaul's drag race is what is chosen family what is you know sort of acknowledging the impact of ballroom culture in the world of drag and the connection to the two and so they are always asking questions about you know what like what about a house mother what is the connection do you have you know do you have a drag mother do you have you know family and so that that that's that feeling of family which really comes through in the film can you just talk a little bit about what that family connection was like i mean for you you were just going to get your keys and then shabam and so eventually what was your connection to the personal connection were these your your sisters and like you can you talk a little bit about the families of it for both of you oh my family basically accepted me for what i did as long as i was happy with it or whatever but uh when i met freddie and all them they was all into sewing and making clothes and i didn't know how to do any of that stuff you know i was a grunt so i sat there and i watched and i learned how to sew and avis gave everybody a class everybody know how to print off has learned how to sew cook clean and take care of your house and you have to work with queen first time in drag not to mention about the education part yeah you have to have a degree in order to be the father of the house so that's why oh yeah so freddie's just got promoted to the father of the house because he graduated this year yeah thank you ron darling so i relinquished my throne after 14 years but you're still the kid so now i'm the grandfather yeah i'm the grandpa i'm old so i'm the grandfather so he's the father of the house so i'm used together so much because i teach in europe as we go and this would he be a great father like i was because my house is raining and don't you forget it dawg and so what about you what would your connection like how did how did you get into the scene and what was the connection to like i said kim was my connection and he was my anchor in the scene um everybody kind of like they would laugh and think that ken would not walk because he would be there he'd smoke his cigarettes and he'd walk around socializing and then all of a sudden the cab would pull up and i come out with kim's clothes and they say oh he is walking oh my gosh freddy's here he's walking yes so that that was me i was always kim's undercover threat for everybody so that was that was my in the process and my connection so now um okay okay let me keep going with these questions on the paper i'm balancing you know what i mean [Laughter] can i can i say something yes you may please okay great i just wanted to say freddie when you were talking about the eight-year-old you know and i just i feel like when the film came out you know it was first unrated and then when it was distributed they rated it all you know which is like there's no why there's nothing rated like there's some topless people and there's one swear word right and that's it there's no sex there's no violence but that's how queer and trans lives that that was dangerous but i just wanted to say about four years ago wesley morris who you know is a critic for the new york times did a feature because the new york times has a kids you know section like it's like a fold-out print-only children's section and for the children's section he did a piece called um you know 12 films to see before you turn 13. and guess what burning is on that and that's how the culture has changed you know like children should see this movie to learn about what they need to learn about the world i think jenny this film helped change that culture you know oh it did 100 speaking of children since you brought it up and i know you've been asked this question before any of you may know but i'm suspecting that someone i hope someone knows what became of those two boys in so okay they live in queens okay they're still alive and live in queens okay good we'll work for ups and everyone work for crime stay until they won't work for ups and won't work for prime okay so they got jobs everybody's nice yeah they making they make it okay because the young out on the street i don't know that look like two three four in the morning down there in the okay so good job um that's probably the number one question i would imagine just one thing speaking of where everybody is every time i see this film that matters how many years later i'm always still broken by the whole thing with venus yeah i cannot get over it it's hard to believe it's only me and him left yeah nothing has changed i want to ask a little bit thank you for bringing that in natalie um so one of the um ladies that was at the ball at the in the hallway with her girlfriend or her partner getting ready to go in and and someone was asking me was you asking why is the show so late what about the the girls and she was like oh the show girls show girl show girls and she was alluding that there was some other activities happening women of the night um did any of the i'm curious if if in your at that time and in your conversations if the notion of what i'm saying no one says it in the film but what i'm taking from the film is that there was an element of survival sex work going on and did obviously that was going on there was a lot less options for for women who were openly trans and there were you know uh there were just a lot less options and so how did you connect with that idea i you obviously edited a lot of stuff out of it or there's stuff that didn't there's there's stuff that we don't see in the film that whether it was captured or not but that is such a major storyline and things like pose and it's something that you can take all these girls are you know many of these girls are working girls but we don't really talk about it that much in the film and so what was your connection to that and did people feel comfortable sharing about that with you i mean there's quite a bit of they're quite there's quite a lot of outtakes you know there were two um girls that we followed um uh i think their names were britney and brett i think uh i s and i just saw these out texts for the first time in years when we got the dvd together you know for for katrina which was back in 2019 um and they were really struggling you know and not well and there were a lot of drugs involved and we didn't want to show that you know and and not because you know we're like oh we're just making a cheerful little movie but we didn't know it well enough do you know what i mean and i think we only wanted to show people we knew well enough we felt confident you know that we loved them and we could show people who were it's not so much like oh you know venus was doing sex work and even though she plays with like oh i'm not doing that it's clear she is but i think you know there was some outtakes of like someone who clearly was like on the street and really suffering and we didn't want to show that because you know that's like again you would have to go very deeply into that story to tell that story so i think you know we struggled with like you know we don't want to make like a cheerful little movie where everyone's just great and perfectly resilient but we also don't want to show something very dire that we're not going deeply into because that's that's not right either it's not the story kind of storytelling we wanted it to be did you want to add anything to that no no no no no no i have a question there were um just as there were women who did there were men who did it um so it was across the board and um you know just like you said it was a thing of just survival and so many people didn't have any other options because at the time it was so different and so very hard unlike today so i i really want to um address this tastefully uh but we're look we were looking at a film with many queer people of color some of whom were engaged in survival sex work some of whom did not have the typical connection to the family you know that might have supported them uh so they found that in community uh and and were so beautifully especially you freddie as what the i take you and dorian um sort of in my mind as the narrators of this entire piece um and you know were so um so candidly sharing parts of your life um and and it was so open and so it felt so unfiltered i think that's why so many people connect to you and the film and and apart at least a very big part of the reason why and so knowing that you are sharing so openly and we're seeing so much of your life how have now in 2022 um in in the light of the epic impact of this film which is obviously undeniable there are conversations which need to be had especially post 2020 uh about you know equity and and sort of the film has gotten has gotten criticism in certain circles and you know this the service that i believe that the film provided was um is priceless and um because we got to connect with these folks but along with that comes criticism about um you know how people were doing after the film and you know different things like that so some of the criticism um you know may or may not have been warranted but i'm curious when at what point did that criticism start to to to come into play that you heard was it immediate i know that you mentioned that some some of the folks said oh this is going to be another you know queen and so that obviously was a notion right away um and so what point did you start hearing some of the criticism did you start hearing some of the criticism if there was any at that back then and certainly it's you know people are more um educated about a lot of these ideals and notions now and so can you talk a little bit about that or address some of that basically the criticism that i heard the feedback and stuff like that from people that was talking about the show they overall liked the movie but they didn't like the way that the characters were projected you know because the only one to me they had a problem with the kids in new york who weren't in it you know because when you're talking when you talk gay you ain't gay until you can say hey so if you want to film when you're hey now you failed now you're going to give everybody watch the show it's hot watch the show it's hot it's it's piping i'm in it but if you're not in it you missed that 15 minutes or so who wouldn't watch some old queens i got on top of that so that's what you get that's the that's the feedback that you get when you look at when you look at the meat on the biscuit they get hungry they be like wow if it wasn't for this show we wouldn't have posed we wouldn't have leave it on the floor we wouldn't have had people coming out of the closet we wouldn't we wouldn't have no transgenders because the government wouldn't pay for it so be be blessed by what you got because of this show i'm not trying to i'm not trying to dig up the show because we did it i'm just saying i've seen so many benefits from the release of the show opposed to that much negativity because now since the show trainees can get this surgery for free in new york thank you for your friends free every day and then food stamps and they pay you to they pay you to live that was the 10 that was that was it that word where it was the taste back to 1991 so that's the this is the movie they get free bodies they go to the doctor come out with breath and on the reel that was a very different situation back in the day even 12 even a few years ago when i started my medical transition i was considering survival sex work because at the time the governor in new york hadn't um you know they weren't doing it so what about the feedback from if you want to add anything to that well i mean just like the feedback from pose uh those there were so many people who were like i'm on it i'm on it i'm on it then all of a sudden when they weren't seen or weren't shown it's like oh who cares about that who care about that i mean i got so many haters i mean real haters people when like back right away after post about your posts even though i was in the room jenny meet and saw among also god bless the dead um hector extravaganza was there in the room when the original thoughts and concepts with paris burning helped to create the show and i get a lot of you know oh you now work how am i not worth i try to do as much as i can to help the community to help people but though cool if you want to do that cool take my spot but though i don't think you really can but go ahead do your thing have fun and i laugh just like y'all natalie you this is a i think i think one of the shining gems on your resume and so what uh what have what is the what has the feedback been that you heard over the years through the decades uh what has the feedback been both outside in personal circles and in the industry i'm curious i would say that um of all the movies i've done commercials every uh art films the blah blah whatever i've done people always come up to me and go nuts about paris is burning i have not heard no one has ever come to me and first and said oh you did what whatever never it's always been glowing glowing and it's i get hit to this day i still get hit on instagram facebook text emails i saw this i saw pirates burning on plane today it's like okay it's a snapshot of me tell me oh yes it is on the plate it's on the place it's edited it's on the planet yes it is no jenny can you speak to uh some of the the criticism and feedback that you've gotten and heard and how it's changed over the years yeah i mean i i'm still you know personally like people often you know if i'm in a place where it's clear i mean i'm a director so people don't know who you are but you know i i'll be at sundance and someone will be like i was a black gay man in a little texas town thank you you know or i was actually on pose you know there i was in the bathroom um during a break and a lady in in the restroom we were washing her hands said may i talk to you and i said yeah yeah sure what's up i'm the director you know talk to she was on the crew she said i'm i'm trans um i saw the movie 10 years ago seeing octavia uh made me realize i could become myself so you know that matters to me more than you know like if a million people have a million criticism those two people you know and it's not just those two people have that feedback then i did my job you know in terms of the criticism i think like bell hooks you know she didn't like it um she i could say a lot about that but the main thing was i think that i think that she didn't appreciate the community she didn't appreciate how radical it is for queer people to make families and i mean she didn't i didn't feel like was this in 1990 91 yeah and i you know there's a lot i could say about that but i also feel like she didn't acknowledge she didn't like a lot of what the white critics said but she didn't acknowledge the black queer critics you know like michelle parkerson who you whose movie you saw today about stormmay she wrote a a review in the black film review now defunct magazine essex hempful you know from tongues untied he wrote about it in the guardian and they all loved it and so i think if she just said like i'm straight and i'm cis and i i don't relate to it because of this or i didn't feel comfortable in the audience because of this but there are these queer critics who are african-american who loved it she didn't even acknowledge it so i didn't i didn't love that and then the only other thing i wanted to say about that is people talk about appropriation and i think there's a lot a big conversation to have about appropriation people telling our own stories telling other people stories but i think that you know film in general you know first of all like i am white i made a film about a black and latinx you know world i'm also queer i'm also gender non-conforming so the intersectional identities were not simple there are some nuances there and i also think film if you look at some of the films that you love you know like like you could look at moonlight and you know the director is a black man but he's not a gay black man you could look at chloe's owl you know and you could say she's not from the nomad world you know there are many things about her identity which give her insight for sure and i don't think all of the best films are always someone representing you know making decisions to tell stories about themselves so i think you know i understand you know i think for someone to say you know i never want to see another direct you know film directed by a man i just want to watch women or i just i don't want to watch white people anymore i just want to watch directors of colors that would be a legitimate decision but if you're gonna take your what you watch from the pool be nuanced about it and some of the conversations about paris is burning you know they're not always nuanced and that's you know that's i could go on and on but that's you know it's almost as if and i don't mean to be so trite with this but it's almost as if they could only reach that criticism standing on the platforms that the movie built in order to get to the space of criticizing it in the first place right with that being said uh i would like to open it one more time if there's anything else that you work thinking that you might have wanted to say uh to our audience please uh get ready to tell us and if there's a question or two that anybody has please let us know we are on tight time so raise your hands and we will uh do our best to get to you so think think about it prepare your question and i'm going to open it up to our esteemed panel one last time to just give a nice um something that you want to say we're not saying goodbye just yet but go ahead and say what you want to say and then we'll and then we'll address the audience afterwards anyone or should we just go right into the question or something okay so we're ready you're ready to go to questions okay sounds good let's go to you hi there hi thank you for picking my question this is a very special film for me uh this movie came out literally the same time as i did like the day before i came out and then the next day it was on donahue i remember that day so i know what movie you went and saw that first day well no actually because it took a while i was in peoria illinois okay they didn't get into was that blockbuster i'm one of those people that's like if you had not made this film i would not have known this world was out there and i would not have known that i was not alone in the world i had never seen five black gay people in a room before i saw this movie before and that was the first time in 1992 that i got to see that and i'm very grateful for that i didn't want to talk about myself but i want to also i have cancer and i just i went through chemo last year and every time i got out of the hospital i watched this film oh and this is actually my first public outing since my stem cell transplant congratulations oh my god thank you for coming so much i love you thank you for the blessing of being here thank you for your blessing because you guys are my elders and i love you so much oh wait there oh man you're the one that said you're going to you you grandfather i'm the grandfather over here i've noticed i'm saying hold on honey how old are you oh how to get read and praised at the same time okay let's go i don't know i have a question oh what's the question i actually wanted i wanted to ask jenny about the choice of them of the song the cheryl lynn song to be real in the movie ended up become such a integral part how did you pick that song so i like most of the music cues in the movie are straight from the ball world you know from what the djs were playing for specific categories but then you know we wanted to use it in a way that suggested that everybody out there was playing the game of realness everyone was creating an identity so it not only spoke to the realness category in the ballroom it's because when i was going to balls you know beginning to go to balls i i'm a night person so i was delighted i'd get there at midnight it wouldn't have started yet you know i'd come out at nine in the morning nine o'clock my schedule i loved it and but i'd look around and suddenly gender was exploded in my mind i was like what's a man what's a woman like everybody's constructing everything and so that that song seemed to really suggest that when you looked at you know the quote-unquote straight people or out on fifth avenue so that's you know all from the ball world djs really fantastic um i think we have a question in the front thank you for your question hello there hi good evening my name is lilac violet maldonado i'm just wanted to um say thank you for being here and um one of my favorite lines in the film is in the end when when dorian says if you shoot an arrow in the sky and it goes real high hurry for you and for me as a person who is a disabled trans person is knowing that my reach is limited and knowing that i have like that like inner validation for myself and seeing this film and seeing how many young people are out there looking for validation and looking for a way to be seen as excellent and worthy and finding these families i'm like i'm like what was it like for you to experience that seeing these young people looking for these validations and it'd be like maybe turning the wrong places sometimes but also finding family and meaning in community what was that like for you as a filmmaker and a subject well for me it was a little different because i was before i got my doctor's degree in psychology i worked in with handicaps at acs and united cerebral palsy so they told us and trained us way back when how to treat people how do we polite to people and to realize that people are just people that's how that also helped me to unite with people of all genders and things like that so i'm glad we were able to give you a good word god bless you yes um me i worked in um hiv and aids in the weimar community health center and you know in uh what is it uh cdos around new york city and most of the time we would try to reach out to people who were just in a word lost and needed validation and needed help needed comfort and needed direction and that's what um i did it you know in the 80s after after the past is burning and it was in a sense of building on of what jenny was talking about and what we needed at the time we were even talking about you know just like you saying stem cells we were talking about it back way back then about how it could help us and um it's so great to know that it's helping people now thank you so very much for your presence yeah and i just i just think that you know the idea of community like it just wasn't something i don't know it wasn't something growing up i was that aware of like what it would be you know like i think i grew up more separate and i think the idea you know not to idealize it either right because people are flawed whether they're in a community or a family or a couple or friends but i think it was really impressive given the forces rallied against you know the people in the ball community and the adjacent people you know like how to actually have self-love and how to give a trophy you know to spread the self-love and and also just like such style and wit and fun and absurdity you know it's just like it's just spoke to me you know as a person and as a person who loves the creative spirit it just it just slew me you know and i just knew i knew it had i i hoped and i knew it had to be seen and that it would it would speak to others and what i loved is that it spoke to others in the community that when we showed it at nyu's you know screening people saw themselves reflected because cinema does elevate stories you know it's a cliche but it really is true yeah but i also think the sense of family really came through for me you know just growing up in the caribbean where you know we would go you have your family and then there was always a cousin or two or three or four you never knew where they came from but who who spawned them or where what happened but they were our family and so we accepted them as family regardless and that's what kind of really i remember so much about being in the board is the houses and the way they took care of each other i was really kind of taken with that and the way you took care of each other i think that was amazing and gave worth to each other thank you for that let's do two we're going to do two more questions we'll go here to you on the left on this side hi i'm heidi this is my favorite film of all time i've seen it this is only my third time seeing it but it's my favorite film ever made for myriad of reasons thank you but i'm one of the many people that have developed the right thanks to this movie have gained a greater understanding of themselves and self-love because i mean so many films that exist in regards to queer people are very sad and they're like oh it's just the sad parts whereas this shows the joy and how much fun shows the black joy yes thank you and i mean i'm so grateful for that but on another note how did this this is for jenny how did the structure come about and how involved were you in the edit great question um you know i think when you set out to make a non-fiction film or most people i know i think they're different ways of making documentaries some people write scripts but you have a vision you know you have a goal you have a sense of what it will be but you don't know you know structurally how it's going to be you're really you know it's the script writing happens in the edit so the way jonathan oppenheim the editor and i worked uh together and johnny was a fantastic editor he was so beloved that he he passed away from cancer two years ago and there's an editing award at sundance named after him he's that beloved but you know we kind of worked with basically i was a nerd with ideas you know i was like i want to talk about race and class and gender and the construction of identity and you know ideas ideas ideas and he was like uh it's about the people you know it's about falling in love with the people so we work together you know like kind of the structure went around introducing the audience to the people and you know developing you as characters you know and then and then the ideas woven in and we worked it out and we had these theme rules you know that were like the the characters and the ideas and the concepts and we just fought it out till we till we got there worked it out yes you did and our last question of the day make it good yeah that's funny i love your hair oh thank you my question is also filmmaking related i i wanted to hear more about the the camera work how you worked with your cinematographer and and was it single camera or did you have multiple camera i mean it just seemed like really a challenging thing to shoot and i loved also the street stuff the the white people on the street i love that stuff so um so basically you know in the balls we did for two of the shoots have two cameras one up in the wings and one that was really expensive you know and for the other all the other stuff was always one camera when we were doing interviews as you'll recall this was again the day of film so you know you didn't again you know this little device it'll work anywhere practically um and so will your prosumer camera that you get at the camera store but in film you know it was very you needed lights so so we would go into people's homes and we were trying to light to make it feel like the way it felt we weren't trying to make it too bright but we'd use gels on lights the gaffer would set the lights and then with the moving the camera i really felt like a lot of the film was about you're given a body you know it it is what it is and maybe you don't feel comfortable with it or maybe that body is another gender or maybe you're struggling with how people with bodies like yours are treated in your your society so i wanted the camera to get like very close on people so you would feel like what if i had that body well what is my body in relation to that body so we really worked with lenses and movements to kind of play with that idea and i think we did it you know i think it works in some of the the um the scenes and you know we were just always trying to move quickly get things quickly um and and keep the relationship you know one of the things about spending two years talking to people and getting to know people not that i knew everybody super well um but you know is that when you go in there's a comfort level and and the camera itself can disappear a little because if you walk you know if you just suddenly turn a camera on me i'd be pretty nervous but if i'd already talked to you for a couple of years less so and freddie you did some of the camera work yes uh well i think that is um it i have one question you all might not know this but it's i i i just i'm unlocking the mysteries of paris is burning who stole the shoes do we know who stole the shoes because i'm looking for them black patent leather pumps honey i didn't steal it because i was on the microphone telling them to give her shoes right i was in the back ironing kim's clothes so i one of us no nobody knows who this is okay i think it was jose stravaganza she didn't get beat up but we heard it was josie okay so we might have put it to rest yeah uh thank you all so much for what you've given us in the past what you continue to give to the community and your legacy and it just ripples out so wonderfully please uh give it up for natalie g hill freddie lee pendavas saul williams pandavas jenny livingston thank you to ucla thank you to the hammer uh and thank you to each and every one of you my name is peppermint we'll take some pictures right here you can take you can put out your phone and take a picture of us at the end of it we'll just stand here and take a picture of us and then we're gonna go