uk cinemas listings

UK Cinemas

Cinema listings with film information and movie reviews

Entertainments Search:

  1. UK Information
  2. UK Cinemas
  3. Film list
  4. Portrait Of Jason

Portrait Of Jason

Shirley Clarke's groundbreaking documentary film has passed through the hands of the restorers before, but this new, improved version is a welcome revelation. Following a worldwide search by Dennis Doros of Milestone Films in an effort to track down materials to replace the existing degraded copies, original prints were discovered at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and the Swedish Film Institute. From these, Milestone and the Academy Film Archive have fashioned a restoration which manifestly re-establishes Clarke's film as her masterpiece. Clarke's aim was to interview, over the course of one evening in her own New York apartment, a charismatic gay African-American cabaret performer with a flair for drama called Jason Holliday. Jason's stories - about racism, homophobia, parental abuse, drugs, sex and prostitution - reveal, in the words of Jonas Mekas, 'a beautiful person and a tragic one'. Ingmar Bergman called it 'the most extraordinary film I've seen in my life'.

Running Time: 103 minutes
Director: Shirley Clarke
Author: Shirley Clarke