Événement

Portrait of Jason

On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costumes and reminisced about good times and bad behavior as a gay hustler, sometime houseboy and aspiring cabaret performer. The result is a mesmerizing portrait of a remarkable, charming and tortured man, who is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking.

Ingmar Bergman called it the most extraordinary film Ive seen in my life. When it first screened in a sneak preview, the audience included Tennessee Williams, Robert Frank, Thomas Hoving, Amos Vogel, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page and Terry Southern. But for decades, Shirley Clarkes powerful and transgressive PORTRAIT OF JASON was unavailable and its original elements were thought to be lost.

PORTRAIT OF JASON is a film that plays with complexities. While it was shot in a cinema vérité style, the films subject is a man who readily admits to deceiving everyone and may be lying to the camera. Was Clarke giving Holliday a stage on which to perform in what he calls his moment, or just using him? She worried about that herself. As Holliday notes about the ironies of life as a houseboy, it gets to be joke sometime as to whos using who. Later, Clarke would say The result, Im convinced is a portrait of a guy who is both a genius and a bore. Although Jason says he really hasnt had any fun as a hustler conning people, he appears to have had the last laugh. Any way you look at the film, it remains of the most fascinating documentaries in cinema.

Now, almost fifty years after it was filmed, PORTRAIT OF JASON is also a potent reminder of what the world was like for black gay men in the heat of the Civil Rights movement and before the Stonewall Uprising.Holliday talks about serving time at New Yorks Rikers Island jail after propositioning (or being propositioned by) an undercover cop. And his observations on the casual racism he experienced are funny, stinging, and painful.

People fell in love with Jason Holliday in 1967. In 1995, Marlon Riggs asked the question in his brilliant Black IsBlack Aint, How long, Jason, how long have they sung about the freedom and the righteousness and the beauty of the black man and ignored you. How long?