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Jennie Livingston
Independent documentary filmmaker whose "Paris Is Burning" (1990) was an involving, compassionate exploration of the world of "vogueing," documenting the drag balls at which mostly black and Hispanic homosexuals and transvestites act out their fantasies. "Paris" won the Los Angeles Film Critics' and the Sundance Film Festival awards for best documentary. Livingston described her film, made over a three-year period for $375,000, as about "how a group of people under siege--from poverty, from racial prejudice, from homophobic violence--triumph with wit, style and love."