Jennie Livingston

Jennie Livingston (born February 24, 1962) is an American director best known for the 1990 documentary Paris is Burning.

Livingston was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Los Angeles, where her family moved when she was two years old.

She is the youngest of three siblings, with two older brothers.

Her mother was the poet, children's book author and anthologist Myra Cohn Livingston.

Her father Richard Livingston was an accountant and author of the children's book The Hunkendunkens.

Livingston attended Beverly Hills High School and graduated from Yale University in 1983, where she studied photography, drawing, and painting with a minor in English Literature.

One of her teachers at Yale was the photographer Tod Papageorge.

Livingston took a summer filmmaking class at New York University in 1984.

Livingston moved to New York City in 1985, and was an activist with the AIDS activist group ACT UP.

She is an out lesbian and lives in Brooklyn.

She is Jewish.

She worked in the art department on the 1987 film Orphans; director Alan J. Pakula, her uncle, encouraged her to make her first film.

Her brother Jonas was a music executive at Geffen Records and at MCA Records, and directed the video for Edie Brickell & New Bohemians' 1988 hit song What I Am.

She has another brother, Joshua.

Livingston's father died of heart disease in 1990, her mother and her grandmother both died of cancer within months of each other in 1996.

Livingston's documentary about a New York gay and transgender Black and Latin ball culture won the 1991 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and was a key film both in the emerging American independent film movement and in the nascent New Queer Cinema.

Paris is Burning was one of Miramax Films' earliest successes, and helped pave the way for a current crop of commercially successful documentary films.

It was one of the best films of 1991 according to The Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, NPR and New York Magazine.

Initially released in 1991, the film continues to screen worldwide at festivals, universities, museums, and community groups, and attracts a multi-generational audience.

Hotheads, a 1993 documentary created through the AIDS research-friendly Red Hot Organization, explores two comedians' responses to violence against women: cartoonist Diane DiMassa, and writer/performer Reno.

Hotheads was shown on MTV and KQED and released on Polygram Video as part of Red Hot's No Alternative compilation.

Two years later, her uncle Alan J. Pakula died in a car accident, and Livingston's brother Jonas died suddenly in early 2000.

The loss of her family and her experience of grief led her to start work on her film Earth Camp One.

Who's the Top?, Livingston's first dramatic short film, premiered at Berlin International Film Festival in 2005, and stars Marin Hinkle, Shelly Mars, and Steve Buscemi.

The film, a lesbian sex comedy with musical numbers, also features 24 Broadway dancers choreographed by Broadway choreographer John Carrafa.

In 2016, it was included in the Film Archive at the Library of Congress, along with 24 other films including The Birds, The Lion King, and East of Eden.

When the film premiered it was positively reviewed by critics including Essex Hemphill, writing for The Guardian and Michelle Parkerson, writing for The Black Film Review.

Favorable reviews appeared in The New Yorker, Time Magazine, The Village Voice, Newsweek, and elsewhere.

Critical reviews came, most notably, from essayist Bell hooks and film critic B. Ruby Rich.

The film has been a source of inspiration for filmmakers, television shows, LGBTQ communities, and queer activists.

It's taught at universities in film, dance, cultural studies, and in multiple other academic disciplines.

For Stonewall 40, the New York activist group FIERCE!

screened the film on the New York piers where much of the film was shot.

In 2017, New York Times critic Wesley Morris included Paris is Burning in a piece for the Times' pullout children's section, "12 Films To See Before You Turn 13."

Said Morris, "Jennie Livingston spent years observing competing enclaves of drag queens. Seeing her documentary as soon as possible means you can spend the rest of your life having its sense of humanity amuse, surprise, and devastate you, over and over."

Two of Livingston's short films, Hotheads and Who's the Top?, explore queer topics.

In 2018, Pratt Institute's Black Lives Matter student group kicked off their weekend of events with a screening of the film and discussion.

The film inspired the creation of the FX show Pose, and its quotes and people and spirit infuse the show.

The main speakers in Paris is Burning include Octavia St. Laurent, Carmen Xtravaganza, Brooke Xtravaganza, Willi Ninja, Dorian Corey, Junior Labeija, Venus Xtravaganza, Freddie Pendavis, Sol Pendavis, Kim Pendavis, and Pepper LaBeija.

The collaborative team that made Paris is Burning and that made it possible include executive producers Madison Davis Lacy and Nigel Finch, editor Jonathan Oppenheim, director of photography Paul Gibson, co-producer Barry Swimar, associate producer Claire Goodman, production manager Natalie Hill, and many others.