Mike Bailey-Gates

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.

This 20-minute short has everything—frisky green mermaids, a giggling nude woman dressed as the sun, and murderous scantily clad blue waves. What more could you want? To top it all off, actress Hari Nef plays a scheming, pink supervillain named Clamindia (who has chlamydia).

Based on a true story, Jason and Shirley recreates the 1966 power struggle between Jewish, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Shirley Clarke and her subject, Jason Holiday, a fierce black gay queen over a 12-hour marathon filming session which gave rise to Clarke's iconic documentary Portrait of Jason.