Portrait of Jason
Jun 21 - Jun 27, 2013
(Shirley Clarke, 1967, USA, 35mm, 105 min)
New 35mm print!
Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason befriends one of the most unforgettable people you’ll never meet. The year, 1967: an African-American gay man in a fitted blazer rehearses show tunes for an act he’s never performed. Clarke builds a memorable cinematic portrait by focusing obsessively on Jason’s dreams for himself (which he chatters about constantly, to anybody listening). Smoothly defying the constraints of genre and the impersonal perspective of classic documentary filmmaking, Portrait of Jason is a legendary character study that has transformed our understanding of self-perception for over 50 years.
“Says more about race, class, and sexuality than just about any movie before or since.” –Village Voice
"Straddling the line between documentary and performance art. . .offers a glimpse of how one grows up and survives as a flamboyant queer in ’60s America." —Seattle Weekly