Jason and Shirley

Stephen Winter, Jason and Shirley, 2015 (still)

Jason and Shirley

April 1, 2016, 8pm

Stephen Winter in attendance, Q&A following both screenings
Friday April 1: Introduced by artist Michèle Pearson Clarke 

Directed by Stephen Winter
Screenplay by Winter, Sarah Schulman, Jack Waters

This powerful new film revisits Portrait of Jason with an improvised re-creation of Clarke’s film shoot, featuring Jack Waters as Holliday and Sarah Schulman as Clarke. In reinterpreting and fictionalizing a canonical work of nonfiction film, Winter creates a complex view of the power relations and societal conflicts from which Clarke’s film arose. 
2015, 79 min.


“For generations of queer men of color who have been horrified by Holliday’s on-screen fate, Jason and Shirley offers a reinvention of a historical moment that sought to consign them to the roles of mascots and scapegoats.” —Tavia Nyong’o, The Guardian


 Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Trinidad-born artist who works in photography, film, video and installation. Using archival, performative and process-oriented strategies, her work explores queer and black diasporic longing and loss. Recent exhibitions include Parade of Champions at Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto (2015), (art)work(sport)work(sex)work at The Power Plant, Toronto (2015) and Complex Social Change at Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto (2015). Recent film screenings include Images Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and Experimenta India. She holds an MSW from the University of Toronto and an MFA in Documentary Media Studies from Ryerson University.


The provocative and influential films and videos in this series feature intimate and transgressive portraits of subjects who, in wildly diverse ways, challenge systems of authority and normative notions of cultural and personal identity. This seven-part screening series is an extension of the exhibition Outsiders: American Photography and Film, 1950s–1980s.

Jason and Shirley (2015) teaser
from Jason and Shirley on Vimeo
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