Jennie Livingston

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

Biography

Livingston was born in Dallas, Texas and grew up in Los Angeles, where she attended Beverly Hills High School. She graduated from Yale University in 1983, where she studied photography, drawing, and painting with a minor in English Literature. Livingston is the niece of the late film director Alan J. Pakula, who initially warned her away from film directing, but later proved encouraging. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Paris Is Burning

Livingston's documentary about a New York gay and transgender Black and Latino 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, and NPR; New York Magazine, in its 2008 40th anniversary edition, called the film one of the most influential cultural works to come out of New York City in 40 years.