#is paris burning?

[lindadarnell]

Bruno Cremer Anthony Perkins Jean-Paul Belmondo Alain Delon Paris brûle-t-il? (Is Paris Burning?) 1966 | René Clément

[sigurism]

Jean-Paul Belmondo, René Clément et Alain Delon

[lobbycards]

Is Paris Burning? (Paris brûle-t-il?), Italian lobby card (fotobusta). Italian theatrical release 1967

[littleeyesofpallas]

[boxcarwild]

Is Paris Burning? (aka Paris brûle-t-il ?) is a 1966 film about the liberation of Paris in August 1944 by the French Resistance and the Free French Forces during World War II.

A French-American co-production, it was directed by French filmmaker René Clément, with a screenplay by Gore Vidal, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost and Claude Brulé, adapted from the 1965 book of the same title by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.

The film stars an international ensemble cast that includes French (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Bruno Cremer, Pierre Vaneck, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Leslie Caron, Charles Boyer, Yves Montand), American (Orson Welles, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Robert Stack, Anthony Perkins, George Chakiris) and German (Gert Fröbe, Hannes Messemer, Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, Harry Meyen, Wolfgang Preiss) stars.

All sequences featuring French and German actors were filmed in their native languages and later dubbed in English, while all the sequences with the American actors (including Welles) were filmed in English. Separate French and English-language dubs were produced.

[third-energy]

Ohayo, ohayo, bonjoooour!

Erica from Sakura Wars 3.

[bantuotaku]

When I first heard that there was this new documentary film about black gay men, drag queens, and drag balls I was fascinated by the title. It evoked images of the real Paris on fire, of the death and destruction of a dominating white western civilization and culture, an end to oppressive Eurocentrism and white supremacy. This fantasy not only gave me a sustained sense of pleasure, it stood between me and the unlikely reality that a young white filmmaker, offering a progressive vision of "blackness" from the standpoint of "whiteness," would receive the positive press accorded Livingston and her film.

Watching Paris is Burning, I began to think that the many yuppie-looking, straight-acting, pushy, predominantly white folks in the audience were there because the film in no way interrogates "whiteness." These folks left the film saying it was "amazing," "marvelous," "incredibly funny," worthy of statements like, "Didn't you just love it?" And no, I didn't just love it. For in many ways the film was a graphic documentary portrait of the way in which colonized black people (in this case black gay brothers, some of whom were drag queens) worship at the throne of whiteness, even when such worship demands that we live in perpetual self-hate, steal, lie, go hungry, and even die in its pursuit. The "we" evoked here is all of us, black people/people of color, who are daily bombarded by a powerful colonizing whiteness that seduces us away from ourselves, that negates that there is beauty to be found in any form of blackness that is hot imitation whiteness.

The whiteness celebrated in Paris is Burning is not just any old brand of whiteness but rather that brutal imperial ruling-class capitalist patriarchal whiteness that presents itself-its way of life--as the only meaningful life there is. What could be more reassuring to a white public fearful that marginalized disenfranchised black folks might rise any day now and make revolutionary black liberation struggle a reality than a documentary affirming that colonized, victimized, exploited, black folks are all too willing to be complicit in perpetuating the fantasy that ruling-class white culture is the quintessential site of unrestricted joy, freedom, power, and pleasure. Indeed it is the very "pleasure" that so many white viewer switch class privilege experience when watching this film that has acted to censor dissenting voices who find the film and its reception critically problematic. Black Looks: Race and Representation pg. 149-150 by Bell Hooks

[boydswan]

Anthony Parkins in IS PARIS BURNING? (1966)