by Jerimarie Liesegang

I was asked to provide a brief account of my making of a documentary about the Hartford “Houses” and associated Balls that were so prominent in the early ‘90’s. This documentary was titled: While Paris Was Burning, Hartford Sizzled and was shown to a packed audience at the 2004 Connecticut Gay and Lesbian Film festival.

One glorious day, in the pre-gentrification times of Tisane’s, I was having a cup of coffee with the love of my life Anja and we ran into Dr. Richard Stillson, aka “Mucha Mucha Pleasure” the mother of the former Hartford House of Pleasure! As Mucha and I chatted, I had lamented the lack of Trans social organizations or events in Connecticut. At that point, Mucha began to tell me a little about the Hartford Houses and Balls that were prominent in the Hartford LGBT scene in the early nineties. This was the first I had ever heard of these and was totally enthralled by the story and the visions the Balls evoked. As I expressed a deeper interest in this topic, Mucha relayed to me that there were videotapes that were taken at these balls. At that moment, I truly gasped and said to Mucha, “we must document this vital queer history of Hartford!”

That took us on the road to creating this docu- mentary on the Hartford Houses and Balls. I should note that I, nor to my knowledge Mucha, never did a documentary before and had no idea how to go about this. Though this did not deter us, and for the next several months, we (Mucha, Anja, Kevin and my- self) met for several hours every Friday to create this documentary. Mucha was the creative genius behind this film by drafting the format and chronology of the documentary. I still have all our original notes from this endeavor and reviewing these recalled that our initial step was to present the documentary in the following sequence: Introduction to the Houses and Balls, what is Fem Queen (Face/Body), what is Real Woman (Face/ Body), what is Butch Queen (Face/Body), a tribute to those in the Houses who died of AIDS, what is Vogue, the very first Gay (Ball) Wedding in Connecticut of Ms. Lola Pleasure, a closing finale from the Circus ball and then closing credits.

With this sequence laid out, the hard part began. We identified folks from the houses (House of Bush Fire, House of Pleasure, House of Trailer Trash, House of Freedom, etc) that we interviewed to provide details around the various Ball categories, as well as their involvement in the Houses; And importantly how the Houses and Balls provided them an important vehicle in expressing their sexuality and diverse genders. We then videotaped many hours of interviews, viewed many hours of tapes from the balls and then my and Anja’s role was to cut and splice all this material into a documentary. Each Friday, Anja and I would show Mucha and Kevin the documentary as we put it to- gether and as a group critiqued it, edit yet again and do more interviews. And importantly to find the right music to overlay on many of the pictures and videos from the balls. Finally, we ended up with a 40-minute documentary that became: While Paris Was Burning, Hartford Sizzled!

If anyone wants a free copy of the video (though free will dona- tions to TransAdvocacy are always appreciated), please contact me at jerimariel@yahoo.com.

As an aside, I am currently working on a documentary around the life of Sylvia Rivera, a pioneering TransActivist and patron saint to many of us in the Trans community. If anyone is interested in get- ting involved in this or other queer documentaries, please contact me at jerimariel@yahoo.com