Portrait of Jason (Motion picture : 1967)

This portrait of Jason Holliday, a black gay prostitute who dreams of a career as a nightclub performer, is drawn from twelve consecutive hours of filming in a New York City apartment.

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"This portrait of Jason Holliday, a black gay prostitute who dreams of a career as a nightclub performer, is drawn from twelve consecutive hours of filming in a New York City apartment."@en
"This portrait of Jason Holliday, a black gay prostitute who dreams of a career as a nightclub performer, is drawn from twelve consecutive hours of filming in a New York City apartment."
"A pioneering work in the cinema verite movement, Shirley Clarke presents a raw record of a confessional conversation with an African-American gay hustler recounting his life and times. A disturbing and fascinating document, it unflinchingly observes Jason Holliday - conversing, performing, confessing, dissolving."@en
"An autobiography of Jason which tells how he survived a life of street hustling."@en
"This portrait of Jason Holliday, a black gay prostitute who dreams of a career as a nightclub performer, is drawn from twelve consecutive hours of filming in a New York City apartment. The documentary presents a view of what it was like to be coloured and gay in 1960's America."@en
"The subject and constant object of this film is male prostitute Jason Holliday giving a stream-of-consciousness "confession" of his life. He performs a pas de deux with the process of making the film: questions from the director and crew are heard, the crew laughs with him at his jokes, at times the camera runs out of film but the sound continues, with black leader replacing the picture. The film itself was shot over a twelve-hour period. Jason recounts tales from his life that define his identity. He describes how he changed his name to change his identity; work he held in the past as a houseboy to wealthy people; his homosexuality and the gay subculture in San Francisco and New York; visits to a psychiatrist; his love for alcohol; his aspiration to be a nightclub entertainer. He gives examples of his nightclub act, imitating female entertainers and movie roles such as Mae West and Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the wind." Towards the end, he is accused by an off-screen voice of being a liar. This brings him to tears, pleading to be loved. The filmmaker's voice ends the film by saying "The end.""
""Portrait of Jason is a film in which Jason Holliday is given the entire screen for an hour and 45 minutes, during which time he makes probably as candid a self-revelation as has been known in the history of motion pictures or literature. And yet, how much is true and how much is a performance? Shirley Clarke's films were always exploring the border between cinema verité and fiction -- and Portrait of Jason may well be her masterpiece." -- www.portraitofjason.com"
"The subject and constant object of this film is male prostitute Jason Holliday giving a stream-of-consciousness "confession" of his life. He performs a pas de deux with the process of making the film: questions from the director and crew are heard, the crew laughs with him at his jokes, at times the camera runs out of film but the sound continues, with black leader replacing the picture. The film itself was shot over a twelve-hour period. Jason recounts tales from his life that define his identity. He describes how he changed his name to change his identity; work he held in the past as a houseboy to wealthy people; his homosexuality and the gay subculture in San Francisco and New York; visits to a psychiatrist; his love for alcohol; his aspiration to be a nightclub entertainer. He gives examples of his nightclub act, imitating female entertainers and movie roles such as Mae West and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the wind. Towards the end, he is accused by an off-screen voice of being a liar. This brings him to tears, pleading to be loved. The filmmaker's voice ends the film by saying "The end.""@en
"The subject and constant object of this film is male prostitute Jason Holliday giving a stream-of-consciousness "confession" of his life. He performs a pas de deux with the process of making the film: questions from the director and crew are heard, the crew laughs with him at his jokes, at times the camera runs out of film but the sound continues, with black leader replacing the picture. The film itself was shot over a twelve-hour period. Jason recounts tales from his life that define his identity. He describes how he changed his name to change his identity; work he held in the past as a houseboy to wealthy people; his homosexuality and the gay subculture in San Francisco and New York; visits to a psychiatrist; his love for alcohol; his aspiration to be a nightclub entertainer. He gives examples of his nightclub act, imitating female entertainers and movie roles such as Mae West and Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the wind. Towards the end, he is accused by an off-screen voice of being a liar. This brings him to tears, pleading to be loved. The filmmaker's voice ends the film by saying "The end.""
"Portrait of Jason is a unique and fascinating interview with professional hustler Jason Holliday. Jason, an Afro-American male prostitute describes his employment by various wealthy gay men as a house boy or male escort. He speaks freely about his drug use, his hustling, and as the film progresses it is unclear whether he may or may not be hustling the filmmaker as well. How much of his story is true? Does it really matter? Is every story a form of fiction, even in a documentary film? Director Shirley Clarke takes pains not to editorialize Jason's story: Jason is Jason in this unvarnished portrait. Shirley Clarke was one of 24 American independent filmmakers who signed a manifesto in 1961 calling for an economic, artistic and political alternative to Hollywood filmmaking. Her films often focused on the lives of Afro-Americans in Harlem, and their hopes and aspirations at a time when Black culture was still marginalized by American society. While mainstream critics expressed nausea and disgust over Portrait of Jason, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman declared it to be "the most fascinating film I've ever seen.""@en
"An autobiography of Jason which tells how he survived a life a street hustling."