Portrait of Jason

The star of Shirley Clarke's unforgettable Portrait of Jason is black, gay, hilarious, heartbreaking and on screen for every one of the film's 107 minutes. The evening of December 3, 1966, director Shirley Clarke and crew filmed Jason for twelve straight hours as he told stories about his life, loves and work. At a time when it was illegal to be gay in the US, Jason spun extraordinary tales about his career as a nightclub entertainer; his confrontations with his father; growing up in Trenton; and the many forms of hustling that comprised the basis of his existence. Jason may be the most self-revealing Scheherazade in the history of documentary films. Or is he? How much of what Jason says is true and how much is a fabulous performance? Even Clarke's filmmaking prevaricates "Portrait of Jason", was designed and painstakingly put together to look rough and entirely unedited. While all her films explored that porous border between Cinema Verite and Fiction, "Portrait of Jason", with it's many ambiguities and contradictions, may well be Clarke's masterpiece.