“[Portrait of Jason] says more about race, class, and sexuality than just about any movie before or since.”
Our second film for this year’s Scalarama festival and Directed By Women celebration is Shirley Clarke’s acclaimed 60s documentary.
Male prostitute and aspiring cabaret performer, Jason Holliday, drinks, smokes and giggles his way through stories and observations of what it was like to be black and gay in 1960s America. Shot over an entire 12 hour day in Clarke’s Chelsea Hotel apartment, Clarke’s extraordinary documentary film employs avant-garde and cinéma vérité techniques in order to reach the tragedy underlying Jason's theatrical, exaggerated persona.
