Many things have changed in the Harlem ball culture since Jennie Livingston's Paris is Burning first documented it in 1990. The mainstreaming of fringe practices, and the toll AIDS has taken on many of the community's pioneers, have all had, whether for better or worse, an irreversible effect. How Do I Look, the new film directed by Wolfgang Busch, has its task cut out for it. The film has to not only introduce and capture the excesses and inscrutably close-knit family ties of the balls and various "houses" who give them their breath of life, but also chronicle the various run-ins and growing pains the community has had to deal with since its early days.

It's in the latter task that the film succeeds. How Do I Look isn't "Ball 101;" Busch assumes a working knowledge on the part of the viewer (most likely thanks to Paris is Burning, though the earlier film isn't explicitly acknowledged). Those unfamiliar with the basics have to rely on personal testimony from the participants (including historian Marcel Christian legends José Xtravaganza, Jaimee Balenciaga and Andre Mizrahi, among others), and the outrageous, eye-popping visuals, which, luckily for Busch and the viewer, speak for themselves.

Whether it's a black rain slicker in the style of a 19^th century English field marshal, a full-on rubber alien costume, or every possible (or impossible) color and combination of spangles, rhinestones, feathers, lamé, and quite possibly one or two textiles of which mainstream designers have not yet conceived, the drag queens, transsexuals and femme queens (which, for your information, exist in a hierarchy) create a dazzling display. And it's not just the clothes – those who "walk" on the ball runways are some of the most beautiful, believable women you're likely to find anywhere, regardless of what's between their legs. And they stick together.

China Blue puts it bluntly: "It's a gay gang,"      

One that often provides a line of defense against the virus that has ravaged the community, made up of minorities from low-income backgrounds, and taken house "legends" Pepper Debeija and Willi Ninja, among others. Busch, above all, takes a hard look at the difficulties the various houses and their members have endured, those that have become all the more apparent since the early '90s, when Livingston's film and the Madonna-popularized "Vogue" dance craze seemed to take the balls irrevocably mainstream. However, houses and their members are no more sober or less fabulous, and their feather-covered tentacles have reached into worlds of fashion and modeling, as well as hip-hop and dance music. They've endured because in their own wild way, they continue to give power to those who at times have been so close to losing it.

-Claire L. Shefchik