Jennie Livingston, filmmaker
I’m a filmmaker, best known as the director of Paris is Burning, a film
that’s distributed by Miramax/Disney, that won a Sundance Grand Jury
Prize, and that is, according to industry sources, once of the most-seen
documentaries EVER. I say this to impress on you that I began making
this film when I was 22, new to New York City. The film took seven years
to make and it began with my taking still photographs, and with film
footage created on the fly, with zero budget. I didn’t go film school at all,
I learned in the film school of New York City.
Before that, I studied photography, at Yale, and studied the great works by
photographers like Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, and Garry Winogrand, all of
whom were known for their great pictures of New York City. If there had been a law
prohibiting them from standing and working in one place, there’d be no great
photography as we know it, no Museum of Modern Art photography department
as we know it. Countless contemporary filmmakers and photographers never would have
moved here, and never would have made their famous photographs and films, all
of which enhance the culture, and the economy, here in the city.
Enabling the police to harass artists with cameras is not a good use of
policemen and womens’ time, nor is it a good message to send out in a city
like ours in which the free exchange of ideas, and the vigorous creation of
imagery is what makes our city the best democracy on the planet!
Homeland security must not mean fascistic and neurotic overregulation
of the things that make America, and New York City, a great place.
Jennie Livingston
- posted Tue., Jul 24, 2007 at 3:00am
- filed in Public Comments
- [2] Comments
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:09 am
It’s more than cameras, set-up times and tripods; it’s about our basic freedoms of expression. With Rupert Murdock buying the Wall Street Journal and the FCC auctioning off our FM 700 mhz bandwaves to the highest bidder, we will be left with nothing commercial journalism bent only on profits, access to the White House and providing us with predigested pabulum. Without a Forth Estate (the media) our Democracy is only a word in a dictionary; something our Fathers used to tell us about.
October 17th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
It’s Michael, and I am currently the Creative Director of the transformative culture
webzine www.realitysandwich.com. The home page has gallery spaces that link to an
e-mail based interview that I would like to conduct with you. As our intent to focus on Visionary culture and Visionary artists it would be an honor to have this interview completed, and be able to let more
people know about the work you do and the process that you go through. The
interview will also contain a link to your site (if you have one) allowing
people a larger view of your accomplishments. Please provide me with five
jpgs of the projects you wish to feature . The interview needs to be completed by
October22nd. If this is not possible then we can arrange another week’s
time as the due date. Also, are there artists you feel we should feature?
Looking forward to a response.
Peace. Love. Light. Michael