Jennie Livingston - Biography

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 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 was 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 it one of the most influential cultural works to come out of New York City in 40 years.

Subsequent works

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

Who's the Top?, Livingston's first dramatic 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 the manner of Busby Berkeley.

"Through the Ice" is a digital short, commissioned in 2005 for public television station WNET-New York, about the accidental drowning of Miguel Flores in Prospect Park, Brooklyn; the film was also seen at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

Livingston is currently directing a documentary feature, Earth Camp One, a first person about grief, loss, and a hippie summer camp in the 1970s, also a broader essay on social and cultural attitudes about death and impermanence, was begun on a 2000 Guggenheim fellowship and was also partially funded by Netflix. She is also developing Prenzlauer Berg, an ensemble film set in the art worlds of New York and East Berlin in the late 80s which was researched on a grant from the German Academic Exchange (DAAD). She has appeared in others' films, speaking about film and filmmaking, including "Fabulous! The Story of Queer Film," created for the cable channel IFC Television in 2006. In 2010, she was the Fran and Ray Stark Distinguished Fellow in Film at Connecticut College.

Filmography

• Paris is Burning (1991)
• Hotheads (1993)
• Stonewall (film installation in theatrical production) (1994)
• Who's the Top? (2005)
• Through the Ice (2005)
• Earth Camp One (2008)

External links

• indiewire interview
• New Yorker filmfile review Paris Is Burning
• Who's The Top? Website