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Jennie Livingston
(February 24, 1962 - living) U.S.A.

Jennie Livingston

Filmmaker

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Jennie Livingston, born in Dallas, Texas grew up in Los Angeles, and moved East when she was 17 to attend Yale University. She graduated from Yale in 1983 with a degree in painting and photography. At that time she considered herself primarily a photographer. Soon after moving to New York City in 1985, she learned about vogueing and the ball world, and headed up to Harlem with her camera.

Five years later, her depiction of this world, in the independent feature-length documentary Paris is Burning, became a sensation. The film received rave reviews, was shown at festivals all over the world, and was released in theatres. Very few documentary film-makers ever achieve this kind of success.

This is remarkable for a film whose subject is the world of poor, black and Latino, gay male drag queens in New York City. And even more remarkable for a first-time film-maker who had taken one course in film-making, but had never been to film school.

The film earned "Best Documentary" awards at the Sundance Festival and from the Los Angeles Film Critics. The success of Paris is Burning has enabled Jennie Livingston to quit all her word processing jobs to devote herself full-time to film-making and her other creative projects.

She recently spent four months in Vermont, where her partner, Vanessa Haney, spent a semester as a visiting artist at Middlebury College. At the end of October they headed back to New York.

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