HARLEM STAGE, 150 Convent Avenue
PORTRAIT OF JASON
Co-presented with Harlem Stage as part of the ongoing series BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT: EXAMINED
Portrait of Jason screens at Harlem Stage’s Gatehouse Theater on Saturday, May 20 at 12PM
Tickets: $10 for screening, $25 for conference day pass (includes lunch!)
Shirley Clarke, 1967, 105 min.
Described by Ingmar Bergman as “the most fascinating film (he) had ever seen in (his) life),” Portrait of Jason is an experimental documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke. Filmed in one night over 12 consecutive hours on December 2, 1966, in the Chelsea Hotel apartment of its director, the cinema vérité film's sole subject, Jason Holliday né Aaron Payne (b. 1924-1998), is a self-described black cabaret performer, houseboy, and gay sex worker who seamlessly weaves together tales about the highs and lows of his life while becoming increasingly inebriated. What begins as a fascinating and oftentimes hilarious performative documentary results in a heartbreaking portrait of a tortured soul, berated and provoked to despair off-screen with increasing hostility by the film's director and her then partner, actor Carl Lee.
Portrait of Jason was first screened in 1967 — its audience included Tennessee Williams, Robert Frank, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Arthur Miller, Andy Warhol, Terry Southern, Elia Kazan, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Rip Torn, and Geraldine Page. Clarke’s film has since been praised as a brilliant experimental documentary about a marginalized subject and a ruthless exploitation of a Black man rarely given a platform to articulate himself in a racist and homophobic world.
This program is part of Harlem Stage’s ongoing series, BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT: EXAMINED, which examines the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s to the 1970s, and its relationship to race, gender, sexuality, music, photography, film, poetry, theater, and dance, as well as its intersectionality with the larger Black Power Movement. The Black Arts Movement was a cultural movement led by Black artists, activists, and intellectuals that shaped the ideologies of Black identity, political beliefs, and African American culture.
More information about BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT: EXAMINED PART VII
THEN AND NOW CONFERENCE
https://www.harlemstage.org/black-arts-movement-then-and-now-conference
