Portrait of Jason
“The most extraordinary film I’ve seen in my life.” – Ingmar Bergman
Groovescooter and Eastside FM happily invite you to what will probably be the most conversation-provoking vision you have all year. It’s certainly unlike anything you’ve seen before or are likely to experience again in a cinema.
An intense, funny, moving, ambiguous and complicated portrait of a NY hustler (or is he?) named JASON HOLIDAY. Directed by Shirley Clarke, who spent a 12-hour night in December 1966 interviewing the – some might say ‘outrageous’ – Jason, this is brave, provacative and game-changing filmmaking. Clarke edited the interview into 105 mintues of eyebrow-raising, direct-to-camera anecdotes from a man who spent his life challenging ideas of class, race, profession, sexuality and gender. Who gives you work and why should you do it? Who are your friends and what are their motivations? What is truth and what is fiction?
Pushing beyond Jason’s sharp clothes, laughter, flamboyance, booze and cigarette smokescreen to shed light on a born-entertainer and frustrated cabaret performer, as the film builds tension and the stories become more illuminating and disturbing, viewers are drawn into an uncomfortable, unpredictable, raw and confrontational meeting between filmmaker and subject.
PORTRAIT OF JASON screens
4pm, Saturday February 22, 2014
@ Event Cinemas, George St Sydney
Co-presented by Groovescooter and Eastside FM
in association with Queer Screen, Event Cinemas and LA Tourism
“By the end of the long night’s shoot, Clarke knew she had captured one of the most involving, uncompromising and revelatory human documents in the history of cinema.” – Stuart Klawans, The Nation
“Serves as a sideways time capsule, creating a blurry snapshot of an Afro-camp subculture during the era of Christopher Street bar raids and burn-baby-burn rioting.” – David Fear, Time Out New York