Queer people of color and members of New York's famed ballroom community have taken umbrage with a scheduled screening of Paris Is Burning, the iconic 1991 documentary that infiltrated the underground scene and profiled some of its most prominent members.

Related: Paris Is Burning Lives With New Play About Venus Xtravaganza

The film was scheduled to screen as part of BRIC's annual Celebrate Brooklyn! program in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, with director Jennie Livingston in attendance and JD Samson providing music.

But on social media, some complained that no queer people of color were invited to participate in the event, and called for a boycott of the screening on its Facebook event page. (

Launched by activist Imani Henry, a petition calling for its cancelation describes the screening as "a pro-gentrification event...[that] did not culturally reflect the indigenous existing TQPOC [trans and queer people of color] communities of Brooklyn or within the film."

There are also claims that Paris exploited the ballroom community, and the petition calls for an apology from Livingston and reparations to surviving performers. "You need to take responsibility for your actions and be accountable to the communities you've harmed with this documentary."

While the omission of queer people of color and members of the ballroom scene from the event definitely needs to be rectified—as Rich Juzwiak at Gawker points out, "these people are around and they’re still eager to share their experiences" —canceling or boycotting the film, and effectively "covering up" the '90s ballroom scene, is equally damaging.

Juzwiak adds:

"From the time of its debut, Paris Is Burning has inspired debates about exploitation, appropriation, and who gets to tell what stories. That these debates rage on 25 years later is a sign of this movie’s vitality.

You may love it (as I do), you may loathe it, but you cannot deny its power. That movie inspires passion unlike most others. It continues to reverberate through culture via things like RuPaul’s Drag Race and discussions of shade-throwing (here’s one in the New York Times Magazine that went up today).

Paris Is Burning is as relevant as ever. Few documentaries have had such a cultural pull.

As for Livingston "exploiting" the ballroom queens, as Juzwiak adds, "Isn’t using your privilege to amplify disenfranchised voices a good, responsible thing to do for the world?"

Responding to the controversy, Livingston was receptive to a dialogue with the ball community and the remaining Paris subjects. "I need to keep talking with the cast members themselves about how they feel about the film and its continued distribution," she wrote. "And if they’re interested, about how can the cast and I work together to benefit the community?"

Samson has pulled out of the event altogether.

Meanwhile, in response to the furor, BRIC announced it would revise the event lineup.

"Having recognized that we made a mistake in the planning of this program, we have been working to figure out how best to right our course," organizers wrote on Facebook. "We have now done what we should have done when we initially planned the event: reached out to QTPOC organizations and individuals, and members of the ballroom community, to gain their insights and hear their ideas for the program. We apologize for not having done so earlier."