corktown common
Thursday, July 6, 2023

Paris is burning

With the short films Monologue Harmonic and music video Too Late (R.Flex ft. Desiire & Tafari Anthony)
and a Ball performance featuring Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance

For decades, Queer and Trans people have had to build their own chosen families and create alternative communities in order to survive and thrive in the face of a homophobic and transphobic public. In Paris is Burning, these chosen families take centre stage, as director Jennie Livingstone trains her camera eye on Harlem’s legendary 1980s ball scene, the birthplace of modern drag. The ball is not just another world for Harlem’s Black and Latinx Queer and Trans communities – it is home, giving them spaces to not only find support and community, but to be their authentic selves. Another World isn’t always a place of fantasy – sometimes it’s a place where you can safely be the most like yourself. 

Preceding Paris is Burning are Monologue Harmonic, from Northern Ontario’s Bawaadan Collective, and Too Late, from Toronto’s electro-R&B sensation R. Flex, featuring Desiire and Tafari Anthony. Monologue Harmonic weaves an almost mythic visual poem, tethering together two distinct yet connected worlds to mirror Queer Indigenous resistance to colonialism. Radha Pithadia’s sumptuous music video for Too Late takes its inspiration from 90s boy bands BLACKstreet and *NSYNC to create an anthem to Black Queer love.

This screening will be presented with optional pre-recorded Audio Description available for blind, low vision, or visually impaired audience members. More information about this accessibility feature is available at TOpictureshow.com/audio. Other accessibility features available at TOPS events, including open captioning, are outlined at TOpictureshow.com/accessibility.

This film screening will be preceded by a Ball performance featuring Toronto Kiki Ballroom Alliance at 7:30pm - don’t miss it!