PARK SLOPE — This year’s Celebrate Brooklyn! festival has added a drag ball to its lineup at a free Prospect Park screening of the documentary “Paris is Burning” later this month — after critics blasted event organizers for excluding members of the cast and community from the event.
The June 26 screening of the film, which portrays the drag ball scene in Harlem during the 1980s, will now feature a competition among eight “houses” in the ballroom community — LaBeija, Ninja, Mizrahi, Khan, Infinity, Milan, Princess and Xtravaganza — before the film begins, organizers said.
The film will also be introduced by two “Paris” cast members, Grandfather Hector Xtravaganza and Jose Disla Xtravaganza, organizers said. A well-known ballroom music producer in the “vogue” style, Vjuan Allure, will DJ the event.
The screening will also include appearances by two veterans of the ballroom scene featured in the 1990 film, Junior LaBeija and Dr. Sol Williams Pendavis, who will speak before the show with director Jennie Livingston.
Critics were enraged last month when Celebrate Brooklyn! released its initial lineup, which included no TQPOC (Trans Queer People Of Color) members of the drag ball community or cast members from the film. Protesters created a Change.org petition and Facebook event page that, among other things, called for the event to be canceled. Because of the controversy, the previously booked DJ for the event, JD Samson of Le Tigre, pulled out of the screening.
The film has attracted criticism for years, as has its director. Celebrate Brooklyn! acknowledged the firestorm in a statement announcing the reconfigured lineup over the weekend, saying “Paris” has “spurred both controversy and progress.”
“Twenty-four years later [it] remains a unique and powerful film for all audiences that is still an organizing tool for gay and trans youth; a focus of scholarship on issues of race, class and gender; and a way for young ball participants and queer people to meet their ancestors,” the statement read.
The “Paris is Burning” screening will be held at 7:30 p.m. at the Prospect Park Bandshell at Prospect Park West and Ninth Street Friday, June 26. The event is free and open to the public with a $3 suggested donation. Gates open at 6:30 p.m.
For more information, visit the Celebrate Brooklyn! website.
