Portrait of Jason
Celebrating Black History
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1h 47m
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 107 mins | 1967
A distillation of a single 12-hour interview in a room at the Chelsea Hotel with the charismatic Jason Holliday (“real” name Aaron Payne), a gay, African American cabaret dancer, part-time hustler, and full-time raconteur, Portrait of Jason grows from a moving, fascinating monologue testimonial to something still thornier and deeper, both a confrontational standoff between Holliday and filmmakers Clarke and Carl Lee, poking holes in their subject’s storytelling, and an inquiry into issues around representation and the privileged gaze of the camera that upends many still-prevalent assumptions in documentary filmmaking. “Transfixing, troubling, immensely powerful… a rocket ship into the future of gay liberation.”—Mark Harris, Film Comment
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The Killing Floor
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Chameleon Street
Directed by Wendell B. Harris Jr. | 95 mins | 1989
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1990 but criminally underseen for decades, the sole feature by Wendell B. Harris Jr.—a canny, inventive, and remarkably assured comedy based on the incredible escapades of real-life con artist William... -
Ganja & Hess
Directed by Bill Gunn | 113 mins | 1973
Cut by timid distributors and inappropriately marketed as grindhouse blaxploitation, this eerie, sui generis work by utterly iconoclastic director Bill Gunn ("Personal Problems") is, in its original form, nothing short of a masterpiece of ‘70s American cine...
