Jason and Shirley Revisited

Synopsis

A radical revisitation. This updated version of Stephen Winter’s 2015 film unearths the ghosts of Jason and Shirley, restaging the volatile 12-hour shoot of the 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason—held at the Chelsea Hotel—which blurred the line between subject and storyteller. Jason Holliday, a sharp-witted Black gay man, whose identity splits between personas–performer, hustler, muse, provocateur–is once again in the room with Shirley Clarke, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who insisted on framing his life. Now, with newly unearthed footage, the director returns 10 years later, not to resolve the contradictions, but to reopen them. What was once a document becomes a haunting, a conversation with what was left outside the frame. Time folds. Power shifts. And Jason, still impossible to contain, speaks back.