Live/Reserved Seating
$15 / $7 Suggested Donation
Presented in collaboration with Maysles Documentary Center
At Harlem Stage's Black Arts Movement: Then and Now conference, Harlem Stage and Maysles Documentary Center (MDC) co-present Portrait of Jason, a 1967 experimental documentary by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke that features Jason Holliday, 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.
The week prior to the conference, Harlem Stage and MDC screen Jason and Shirley, the 2015 docudrama by Stephen Winter inspired by Portrait of Jason. In this reimagining, Jason Holliday (played by Jack Waters) competes with Shirley Clarke (played by Sarah Schulman) over the documentary film she makes about his life, during a marathon 12-hour shoot in her apartment at the legendary Chelsea Hotel. Join us for what Richard Brody of The New Yorker called "one of the year's finest films," and an "anguished view of the power relations, societal conflicts, and cruel sacrifices from which Clarke’s film arose."
Run time: 77 minutes, followed by a post-screening discussion with Jack Waters (in-person) and Stephen Winter and Sarah Schulman (Zoom)!
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