JASON AND SHIRLEY: THE ALTERNATE CUT
dir. Stephen Winter, 2015
79 mins. United States.
In English.
SATURDAY, JUNE 18 – 7PM w/post-screening discussion
ONE NIGHT ONLY!
$10 (Nobody turned away for lack of funds)
A portion of the proceeds will be donated to Washington Square Park Mutual Aid
[Note: This alternate cut of the film, provided by the filmmaker himself, includes different line readings and music cues throughout.]
Cine Móvil presents an alternate cut of JASON AND SHIRLEY with director Stephen Winter in attendance! The film, shot with a roaming handheld video aesthetic, presents a multivalent, dreamlike vision of what may (or may not) have transpired behind-the-scenes of Shirley Clarke’s PORTRAIT OF JASON. That original work, considered a groundbreaking piece of early queer documentary cinema, avoided interrogating Clarke’s own positionality as a queer white woman of means filming Jason, a gay black hustler, while steadily plying him with drinks. In interviews, Clarke would describe her fascination with depicting poor black people’s struggles as being borne from feeling she could relate to them as “outsiders.”
JASON AND SHIRLEY does not concern itself with rigid factual accuracy, instead choosing to construct an imaginative battle of wills between its titular characters. Queer activist & author Sarah Schulman plays Shirley Clarke with the cool remove of a director concerned primarily with getting a desired cinematic result, and actor Jack Waters conjures Jason to videotape with a mixture of arch creativity & striking verisimilitude. The film raises many questions & contradictions, and to its credit, poses no easy answers. In short, it is the ideal film for discussing the thorny dynamics of race, class, and gender within the documentary form. Cine Móvil will facilitate a whole group discussion afterward with director Stephen Winter & the audience.
“The Jason that I was always looking for was the one who talked about civil rights, the one who was aggressive, stood up for himself, who was in cahoots with the creators of the portrait, who was as responsible for its content as Shirley was. What Shirley did to get that performance out of him — that’s where I realized I needed to be living.” – Stephen Winter, Filmmaker Magazine