I'm Your Venus

Kimberly Reed's 2024 documentary concerns the unsolved 1988 murder of Venus Xtravaganza, who appears in Paris Is Burning. Venus was killed before that film was finished and the case was never resolved. The documentary brings two families together: the one Venus was born into and the House of Xtravaganza in ballroom culture. The two groups did not know each other for years, and the film records their first meeting in the same room. The tension and the closeness that result are at its centre. A legal process also runs through it. The family petitions to correct the name and gender on Venus's death certificate. That bureaucratic detail shows concretely how trans people are left off the record even after death. Who it's for: those interested in ballroom culture and the history of trans rights. Who it's not for: viewers who want to avoid murder and violence against trans people; the film places both at its centre.