Portrait of Jason

  • January 27, 2017 / 17:30

Director: Shirley Clarke
Cast: Jason Holliday, Shirley Clarke, Carl Lee
USA, 1967, HD, b&w, 105’

“How long, Jason, how long have they sung about the freedom and the righteousness and the beauty of the black man and ignored you. How long?” Marlon Riggs

On the night of December 2, 1966, Clarke and a tiny crew convened in her apartment at the Hotel Chelsea to make a film. There, for twelve straight hours they filmed the one-and-only Jason Holliday as he spun tales, sang, donned costumes and reminisced about good times and bad behavior as a gay hustler, sometime houseboy and aspiring cabaret performer. Playing with complexities, the film was shot in a cinema vérité style, the film's subject is a man who readily admits to deceiving everyone and may be lying to the camera. Was Clarke giving Holliday a stage on which to perform in what he calls his "moment" or just using him? She worried about that herself. As Holliday notes about the ironies of life as a houseboy, "it gets to be joke sometime as to who's using who."

Almost fifty years after it was filmed, Portrait of Jason is also a potent reminder of what the world was like for black gay men in the heat of the Civil Rights movement and before the Stonewall Uprising. To restore the film, Milestone chased down the original 16mm reels, preserving this moving testimony from a gay, African-American man whose story bears witness to a history that his country would erase. This is the year for Jason Holliday and Shirley Clarke’s brilliant documentary which Ingmar Bergman says “the most extraordinary film I’ve seen in my life” to be rediscovered.

#BKKY

#BKKY

Arianna

Arianna

James Baldwin Selection

James Baldwin Selection

Glitch FF Selection: Persistence of Memory

Glitch FF Selection: Persistence of Memory

Who's Gonna Love Me Now?

Who's Gonna Love Me Now?

Portrait of Jason

Portrait of Jason

First Girl I Loved

First Girl I Loved

The Nest

The Nest

What He Did

What He Did

You’ll Never Be Alone

You’ll Never Be Alone

Real Boy

Real Boy

The Watermelon Woman

The Watermelon Woman

queer (ab)uses of archives

queer (ab)uses of archives

Family and Shared Cultural Histories  <br>Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Family and Shared Cultural Histories
Njideka Akunyili Crosby

Pera Museum, in collaboration with Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), is one of the main venues for this year’s 15th Istanbul Biennial from 16 September to 12 November 2017.

Giacometti’s Final Works

Giacometti’s Final Works

Giacometti was selected for three important retrospectives at the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Gallery in London and the Louisiana Museum of Art in Denmark, all of which were a great success. 

Soothsayer Serenades I Two-handed by Kübra Uzun

Soothsayer Serenades I Two-handed by Kübra Uzun

Today we are thrilled to present the first playlist of Amrita Hepi’s Soothsayer Serenades series as part of the Notes for Tomorrow exhibition. The playlist titled Two-handed is presented by Kübra Uzun on Pera Museum’s Spotify account.