Festival releases titles due to be showcased in retrospective exploring Black film.
A restored copy of Spike Lee’s 1989 classic Do The Right Thing (1989) will be given a 30th anniversary Piazza Grande screening at the Locarno Film Festival as part its Black Light retrospective exploring Black cinema.
It is among some 20 titles included in the ambitious overview encompassing race films of the 1920s and 30s, 1970s Blaxploitation classics and works by cult directors including Lee and the late John Singleton, whose 1991 breakthrough debut Boyz N The Hood is in the selection.
Lee’s explosive comedy-drama Do The Right Thing, exploring...
A restored copy of Spike Lee’s 1989 classic Do The Right Thing (1989) will be given a 30th anniversary Piazza Grande screening at the Locarno Film Festival as part its Black Light retrospective exploring Black cinema.
It is among some 20 titles included in the ambitious overview encompassing race films of the 1920s and 30s, 1970s Blaxploitation classics and works by cult directors including Lee and the late John Singleton, whose 1991 breakthrough debut Boyz N The Hood is in the selection.
Lee’s explosive comedy-drama Do The Right Thing, exploring...
- 6/25/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Festival releases titles due to be showcased in retrospective exploring Black film.
A restored copy of Spike Lee’s 1989 classic Do The Right Thing (1989) will be given a 30th anniversary Piazza Grande screening at the Locarno Film Festival as part its Black Light retrospective exploring Black cinema.
It is among some 20 titles included in the ambitious overview encompassing race films of the 1920s and 30s, 1970s Blaxploitation classics and works by cult directors including Lee and the late John Singleton, whose 1991 breakthrough debut Boyz N The Hood is in the selection.
Lee’s explosive comedy-drama Do The Right Thing, exploring...
A restored copy of Spike Lee’s 1989 classic Do The Right Thing (1989) will be given a 30th anniversary Piazza Grande screening at the Locarno Film Festival as part its Black Light retrospective exploring Black cinema.
It is among some 20 titles included in the ambitious overview encompassing race films of the 1920s and 30s, 1970s Blaxploitation classics and works by cult directors including Lee and the late John Singleton, whose 1991 breakthrough debut Boyz N The Hood is in the selection.
Lee’s explosive comedy-drama Do The Right Thing, exploring...
- 6/25/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
In 1983, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with Media Study/Buffalo, created a touring retrospective of avant-garde films, primarily feature-length ones and a few shorts, which they called “The American New Wave 1958-1967.” To accompany the tour, a hefty catalog was produced that included notes on the films, essays by film historians and critics, writings by major underground film figures and more.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
- 11/25/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)
This week’s question: In honor of “The Florida Project,” which has just started its platform release across the country, what is the greatest child performance in a film?
Jordan Hoffman (@JHoffman), The Guardian, Vanity Fair
I can agonize over this question or I can go at this Malcolm Gladwell “Blink”-style. My answer is Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon.” She’s just so funny and tough, which of course makes the performance all the more heartbreaking. She won the freaking Oscar at age 10 for this and I’d really love to give a more deep cut response, but why screw around? Paper Moon is a perfect film and she is the lynchpin.
This week’s question: In honor of “The Florida Project,” which has just started its platform release across the country, what is the greatest child performance in a film?
Jordan Hoffman (@JHoffman), The Guardian, Vanity Fair
I can agonize over this question or I can go at this Malcolm Gladwell “Blink”-style. My answer is Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon.” She’s just so funny and tough, which of course makes the performance all the more heartbreaking. She won the freaking Oscar at age 10 for this and I’d really love to give a more deep cut response, but why screw around? Paper Moon is a perfect film and she is the lynchpin.
- 10/9/2017
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Museum of the Moving Image
Before his masterful Sunset Song begins its U.S. run, Terence Davies will be given a complete retrospective at MoMI. His self-titled trilogy screens on Saturday and Sunday; the latter day also brings Distant Voices, Still Lives and, with a post-screening Q & A to boot, The Long Day Closes.
Metrograph
“Welcome...
Museum of the Moving Image
Before his masterful Sunset Song begins its U.S. run, Terence Davies will be given a complete retrospective at MoMI. His self-titled trilogy screens on Saturday and Sunday; the latter day also brings Distant Voices, Still Lives and, with a post-screening Q & A to boot, The Long Day Closes.
Metrograph
“Welcome...
- 5/6/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Since any New York cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
In honor of David Bowie, Nagisa Oshima‘s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (on 35mm) and Nicolas Roeg‘s The Man Who Fell to Earth will screen for free on Friday.
Film Forum
“Stratford on Houston” bring the Bard to New York, with Richard III, Welles‘ and Polanski‘s Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew,...
Film Society of Lincoln Center
In honor of David Bowie, Nagisa Oshima‘s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (on 35mm) and Nicolas Roeg‘s The Man Who Fell to Earth will screen for free on Friday.
Film Forum
“Stratford on Houston” bring the Bard to New York, with Richard III, Welles‘ and Polanski‘s Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew,...
- 1/15/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Milestone Film & Video is one of the finest and most well-established U.S. distributor of docs and arthouse features. They have such great films like the classic "I am Cuba" and have been working on compiling all they can on the filmmaker Shirley Clarke ("The Connection") whose film in the 60s, "The Cool World," made me one of her avid fans forever. Their film, "Portrait of Jason," also by Clarke, premiered at Idfa 2014, the premium doc festival in the world and I was lucky enough to see it at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. Its clarity and humanity moved me so much that I feel obliged to publish this here. When Amy Heller and Dennis Doros of Milestone speak the way they do in the following blog, I listen. Since the film "Jason and Shirley" just premiered at BAMcinemaFest and Frameline Film Festival, both wonderful events, I think it is important for everyone to know what they have to say. "In 25 years, we have never weighed in on anyone else's film (except to recommend those we love), but Dennis and I felt the need to go on the record about Stephen Winter's new feature Jason and Shirley."
'Jason and Shirley': The Cruelty and Irresponsibility of 'Satire'
by Amy Heller
In the twenty-five years that we have been running Milestone Films, we have never before reviewed or commented publicly on anyone else’s film—except to recommend it. But we have now encountered a new feature film that purports to “satirize” a film and a filmmaker we represent and have spent years researching. While we are absolute believers in freedom of speech and artistic expression and do not dispute that the producers, writers and stars of Jason and Shirley have every right to make their “re-vision” of the making of Shirley Clarke’s great documentary "Portrait of Jason," we feel we must go on the record about the film’s inaccurate and simplistic portrayals of a brilliant filmmaker and her charismatic subject.
Director Stephen Winter (and co-writers Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters) have created a fictitious drama that imagines what might have happened on December 3, 1966 when Shirley Clarke spent twelve hours with Jason Holliday, Carl Lee, Jeri Sopanen, Jim Hubbard and Bob Fiore shooting "Portrait of Jason." The filmmakers claim the right to re-imagine the events that took place in that Hotel Chelsea apartment, but they fail to understand something that Shirley Clarke knew and conveyed in all her films: the need for integrity.
Clarke’s first feature, "The Connection," a fiction film based partly on real people, has enormous respect for all its characters, an understanding of humanity, and a love for cinema. Shirley knew that a genuine artist values inner truth, whether the film is a documentary or a dramatic feature. And of course, Shirley did not use real names. She knew that when you use real people’s names and identities, you need to seek and explore the truth in all its complexities. Ornette: Made in America, a film that she and Ornette Coleman were very proud to create, is an example of Clarke’s quest for meaning and authenticity.
We at Milestone are now in the seventh year of “Project Shirley,” our ongoing commitment to learn everything about Clarke as a director, an artist and a person. With the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater and the Clarke estate, we have digitized nearly one hundred of her features, short films, outtakes, unfinished projects, home movies, and experimental films and videos. We have gone through thousands of pages of letters, contracts, and Shirley’s diaries. We have interviewed and talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with her.
We have heard wonderful stories, tragic stories, and stories of such real pain that they are almost unbearable. Shirley Clarke was a sister, wife, mother, dancer, lover, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and yes, for a sad period, a junkie. It wasn’t intended, but along the way we fell in love with Shirley and came to feel that we owed it to her to create a portrait of a real woman and an artist. Shirley’s daughter Wendy Clarke and her extended family have supported our efforts every step of the way, encouraging us to reveal what is true, for better or worse. We have shared our discoveries with the world in theaters, on television, on DVD and Blu-Ray, in lectures — and in our exhaustive press kits (available on our website, free for everyone).
We have strived for the highest levels of accuracy, knowing that critics, academics, bloggers, and the general public deserve and depend on our research. We corroborated all the oral histories we conducted using primary sources, including original letters, interviews, and contracts. Finally, we asked people who knew Shirley to check and proof all our work. We have shared this research with every filmmaker, scholar and critic who has asked us for information.
So it was truly agonizing for us to watch Stephen Winter’s "Jason and Shirley," a film that is bad cinema and worse ethics—that cynically appropriates and parodies the identities of real people, stereotyping and humiliating them and doing disservice to their memory. The filmmakers may call it an homage, but their complete lack of research and their numerous factual errors and falsehoods have betrayed everyone who was involved in making "Portrait of Jason."
Winter and his team call their film an “imagination” of the night (although they stage the filming during the day) of December 3, when Shirley Clarke shot "Portrait of Jason." But interestingly, they only use the real names of those participants who have died: Clarke, Jason Holliday and Carl Lee (perhaps because you cannot libel the dead). They did not interview the people who were on the set that long night and who are still around—filmmakers Bob Fiore and Jim Hubbard.
They also chose not to work with Shirley’s daughter, artist and filmmaker Wendy Clarke, whom they never bothered to contact (and go out of their way to mock in the film). Jason and Shirley even features a title card in the closing credits thanking Wendy, implying that she has given her approval for the film. In truth, Wendy’s response, when she finally saw Jason and Shirley, was: “I don’t want people seeing this film to think there is any truth to it. This film tells nasty lies and is a parasitic attempt to gain prominence from true genius.”
Similarly, the filmmakers never asked us at Milestone for access to the reams of documents we have discovered from the making of "Portrait of Jason." Instead, they preferred to pretend to know what happened, to create their own “Shirley Clarke,” “Carl Lee,” and “Jason Holliday,” rather than try to create honest and respectful portraits of these very real people.
Lazy filmmakers make bad movies and "Jason and Shirley" is false, flaccid, and boring—unforgivable cinematic sins. Perhaps its most egregious and painful crime is taking the strong, brilliant woman that Shirley Clarke truly was and portraying her as a lumpy, platitude-spouting Jewish hausfrau—an inept cineaste who doesn’t know what she is doing and eventually needs her boyfriend to “save” the film for her. In service of their alleged investigation into race relations (a topic Shirley explored far better with her powerful and intelligent films "The Connection," "The Cool World," "Portrait of Jason" and "Ornette: Made in America"), they reduced her to a sexist cliché—the little woman—and a tedious cliché at that.
Shirley Clarke was wild, creative, brilliant, graceful, challenging, incredibly stylish, vibrant, and alive with the possibilities of life. At home at the center of many creative circles in New York City and around the world, she was adored by countless admirers—despite (or sometimes because of) her faults and failings. And Shirley is still loved by those who remember her—the people who worked on her films, her friends, her family, and the audiences who are rediscovering her great films. She was incredibly special. The misshapen caricature of Clarke in Jason and Shirley insults and trivializes a great artist and pioneer.
We also find “Jason” in Winter’s film to be a one-dimensional and disrespectful distortion of the very complicated man who was born Aaron Payne in 1924. Jason Holliday’s life was difficult in many ways—as a gay black man he experienced police harassment, poverty, family rejection, imprisonment, painful self-doubt, and innumerable varieties of personal and institutional racism. But he was also vibrantly an original, a self-invented diva, a survivor, and a raconteur of the first order who was the inspiration for his own cinematic Portrait. Shirley decided to make her film in order to explore this extraordinary Scheherazade’s 1001 stories—and the fragile line between his reminiscences and his inventions.
And truly, it is not easy to tell what was real and what was not in Jason’s life. In his “Autobiography” (reprinted in Milestone’s press kit), Holliday talked about appearing on Broadway in “Carmen Jones,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Green Pastures” and about performing his nightclub act in Greenwich Village. And while much of his narrative may seem improbable, the Trenton Historical Society found newspaper articles from the 1950s corroborating Jason’s claim that he was a performer at New York’s Salle de Champagne. So did he study acting with Charles Laughton and dance with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham? We may never know. But the man who spun those marvelous yarns was not the alternately maniacal and weepy loser in "Jason and Shirley."
Here are just a few of the other things that are obviously, carelessly and offensively wrong in "Jason and Shirley":
In the very beginning, there is a title card stating that the filmmakers were denied access to the outtakes of "Portrait of Jason." These recordings were available for all to hear at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where all of Shirley’s archives can be found—or by contacting Milestone. In fact, all the outtakes (30 minutes of audio) were released on November 11, 2014 as a bonus features on Milestone’s DVD and Blu-Ray of the film. That was six months before "Jason and Shirley" was completed.
In "Jason and Shirley," “Jason” has never previously visited “Shirley’s” apartment and knows nothing about her. In reality, they had been friends for many years and Jason would often visit her apartment. The film states that the cinematographer on Portrait of Jason had worked on Clarke’s other two features. Actually, the film was Jeri Sopanen’s first job with her. Further, absolutely no crew member had an issue about working on "Portrait of Jason," as the new film portrays.
In the film “Shirley” says, “See that horrible painting on the wall? My daughter painted that… I have a daughter who is a terrible artist.” Fact: in several video interviews with Shirley (including one released as a bonus feature on Ornette: Made In America, which also came out last November) and in many of her letters and diaries, Clarke talked about how extremely proud she was of her daughter Wendy and her art. Mother and daughter worked happily together for years on many projects including the legendary Tee Pee Video Space Troupe. Wendy’s fine art, textiles, and video work have received critical praise for nearly 50 years. It was needlessly and maliciously hurtful for the filmmakers to include a line that is so obviously false and unkind.
In the film, “Shirley” says her maiden name was Bermberg. She was born Shirley Brimberg.
There is an Academy Award® statue for "Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World" in “Shirley’s” apartment and the other characters repeatedly mock her for it. The film did win an Oscar®, but although she received directing credit, Shirley had been fired from the final edit and producer Robert Hughes picked up the award. (You can see this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOS70Tqsz7U)
“Shirley” asks “Jason” to go up on the roof of the Hotel Chelsea with her to talk. In reality, her apartment was famously on the roof.
In the film, “Shirley” is unable to finish Portrait of Jason and tells everybody to go home and “Carl Lee” comes in to take over the film and save it. This is ludicrous, wrong and misogynistic. Clarke was a consummate film professional and all her collaborators attest to her skill and drive.
The film ends with a title card stating that Shirley died in New York (which is simply incorrect) and that Carl Lee died of a heroin overdose. Tragically, Lee died of AIDS and this information is in the Milestone press kit.
Another title card indicates that when Jason Holliday died that there were no friends or family listed in his one obituary. In truth, the Trentonian on July 31, 1998 wrote that two sisters, six nieces and two nephews survived him. We found the relatives when doing our research.
The filmmakers have labeled "Jason and Shirley" a satirical work of fiction. We are just not sure who or what they claim to be satirizing. The film is not ironic, humorous, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. We can only surmise that they are deliberately parodying the idea of cinematic integrity.
On behalf of Milestone, Wendy Clarke, and Shirley Clarke’s extended family and friends, we respectfully ask film fans not to base their appraisal of Clarke and her filmmaking on the unkind depictions in "Jason and Shirley."
Yours in cinema,
Amy Heller and Dennis Doros
Milestone Films...
'Jason and Shirley': The Cruelty and Irresponsibility of 'Satire'
by Amy Heller
In the twenty-five years that we have been running Milestone Films, we have never before reviewed or commented publicly on anyone else’s film—except to recommend it. But we have now encountered a new feature film that purports to “satirize” a film and a filmmaker we represent and have spent years researching. While we are absolute believers in freedom of speech and artistic expression and do not dispute that the producers, writers and stars of Jason and Shirley have every right to make their “re-vision” of the making of Shirley Clarke’s great documentary "Portrait of Jason," we feel we must go on the record about the film’s inaccurate and simplistic portrayals of a brilliant filmmaker and her charismatic subject.
Director Stephen Winter (and co-writers Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters) have created a fictitious drama that imagines what might have happened on December 3, 1966 when Shirley Clarke spent twelve hours with Jason Holliday, Carl Lee, Jeri Sopanen, Jim Hubbard and Bob Fiore shooting "Portrait of Jason." The filmmakers claim the right to re-imagine the events that took place in that Hotel Chelsea apartment, but they fail to understand something that Shirley Clarke knew and conveyed in all her films: the need for integrity.
Clarke’s first feature, "The Connection," a fiction film based partly on real people, has enormous respect for all its characters, an understanding of humanity, and a love for cinema. Shirley knew that a genuine artist values inner truth, whether the film is a documentary or a dramatic feature. And of course, Shirley did not use real names. She knew that when you use real people’s names and identities, you need to seek and explore the truth in all its complexities. Ornette: Made in America, a film that she and Ornette Coleman were very proud to create, is an example of Clarke’s quest for meaning and authenticity.
We at Milestone are now in the seventh year of “Project Shirley,” our ongoing commitment to learn everything about Clarke as a director, an artist and a person. With the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater and the Clarke estate, we have digitized nearly one hundred of her features, short films, outtakes, unfinished projects, home movies, and experimental films and videos. We have gone through thousands of pages of letters, contracts, and Shirley’s diaries. We have interviewed and talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with her.
We have heard wonderful stories, tragic stories, and stories of such real pain that they are almost unbearable. Shirley Clarke was a sister, wife, mother, dancer, lover, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and yes, for a sad period, a junkie. It wasn’t intended, but along the way we fell in love with Shirley and came to feel that we owed it to her to create a portrait of a real woman and an artist. Shirley’s daughter Wendy Clarke and her extended family have supported our efforts every step of the way, encouraging us to reveal what is true, for better or worse. We have shared our discoveries with the world in theaters, on television, on DVD and Blu-Ray, in lectures — and in our exhaustive press kits (available on our website, free for everyone).
We have strived for the highest levels of accuracy, knowing that critics, academics, bloggers, and the general public deserve and depend on our research. We corroborated all the oral histories we conducted using primary sources, including original letters, interviews, and contracts. Finally, we asked people who knew Shirley to check and proof all our work. We have shared this research with every filmmaker, scholar and critic who has asked us for information.
So it was truly agonizing for us to watch Stephen Winter’s "Jason and Shirley," a film that is bad cinema and worse ethics—that cynically appropriates and parodies the identities of real people, stereotyping and humiliating them and doing disservice to their memory. The filmmakers may call it an homage, but their complete lack of research and their numerous factual errors and falsehoods have betrayed everyone who was involved in making "Portrait of Jason."
Winter and his team call their film an “imagination” of the night (although they stage the filming during the day) of December 3, when Shirley Clarke shot "Portrait of Jason." But interestingly, they only use the real names of those participants who have died: Clarke, Jason Holliday and Carl Lee (perhaps because you cannot libel the dead). They did not interview the people who were on the set that long night and who are still around—filmmakers Bob Fiore and Jim Hubbard.
They also chose not to work with Shirley’s daughter, artist and filmmaker Wendy Clarke, whom they never bothered to contact (and go out of their way to mock in the film). Jason and Shirley even features a title card in the closing credits thanking Wendy, implying that she has given her approval for the film. In truth, Wendy’s response, when she finally saw Jason and Shirley, was: “I don’t want people seeing this film to think there is any truth to it. This film tells nasty lies and is a parasitic attempt to gain prominence from true genius.”
Similarly, the filmmakers never asked us at Milestone for access to the reams of documents we have discovered from the making of "Portrait of Jason." Instead, they preferred to pretend to know what happened, to create their own “Shirley Clarke,” “Carl Lee,” and “Jason Holliday,” rather than try to create honest and respectful portraits of these very real people.
Lazy filmmakers make bad movies and "Jason and Shirley" is false, flaccid, and boring—unforgivable cinematic sins. Perhaps its most egregious and painful crime is taking the strong, brilliant woman that Shirley Clarke truly was and portraying her as a lumpy, platitude-spouting Jewish hausfrau—an inept cineaste who doesn’t know what she is doing and eventually needs her boyfriend to “save” the film for her. In service of their alleged investigation into race relations (a topic Shirley explored far better with her powerful and intelligent films "The Connection," "The Cool World," "Portrait of Jason" and "Ornette: Made in America"), they reduced her to a sexist cliché—the little woman—and a tedious cliché at that.
Shirley Clarke was wild, creative, brilliant, graceful, challenging, incredibly stylish, vibrant, and alive with the possibilities of life. At home at the center of many creative circles in New York City and around the world, she was adored by countless admirers—despite (or sometimes because of) her faults and failings. And Shirley is still loved by those who remember her—the people who worked on her films, her friends, her family, and the audiences who are rediscovering her great films. She was incredibly special. The misshapen caricature of Clarke in Jason and Shirley insults and trivializes a great artist and pioneer.
We also find “Jason” in Winter’s film to be a one-dimensional and disrespectful distortion of the very complicated man who was born Aaron Payne in 1924. Jason Holliday’s life was difficult in many ways—as a gay black man he experienced police harassment, poverty, family rejection, imprisonment, painful self-doubt, and innumerable varieties of personal and institutional racism. But he was also vibrantly an original, a self-invented diva, a survivor, and a raconteur of the first order who was the inspiration for his own cinematic Portrait. Shirley decided to make her film in order to explore this extraordinary Scheherazade’s 1001 stories—and the fragile line between his reminiscences and his inventions.
And truly, it is not easy to tell what was real and what was not in Jason’s life. In his “Autobiography” (reprinted in Milestone’s press kit), Holliday talked about appearing on Broadway in “Carmen Jones,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Green Pastures” and about performing his nightclub act in Greenwich Village. And while much of his narrative may seem improbable, the Trenton Historical Society found newspaper articles from the 1950s corroborating Jason’s claim that he was a performer at New York’s Salle de Champagne. So did he study acting with Charles Laughton and dance with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham? We may never know. But the man who spun those marvelous yarns was not the alternately maniacal and weepy loser in "Jason and Shirley."
Here are just a few of the other things that are obviously, carelessly and offensively wrong in "Jason and Shirley":
In the very beginning, there is a title card stating that the filmmakers were denied access to the outtakes of "Portrait of Jason." These recordings were available for all to hear at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where all of Shirley’s archives can be found—or by contacting Milestone. In fact, all the outtakes (30 minutes of audio) were released on November 11, 2014 as a bonus features on Milestone’s DVD and Blu-Ray of the film. That was six months before "Jason and Shirley" was completed.
In "Jason and Shirley," “Jason” has never previously visited “Shirley’s” apartment and knows nothing about her. In reality, they had been friends for many years and Jason would often visit her apartment. The film states that the cinematographer on Portrait of Jason had worked on Clarke’s other two features. Actually, the film was Jeri Sopanen’s first job with her. Further, absolutely no crew member had an issue about working on "Portrait of Jason," as the new film portrays.
In the film “Shirley” says, “See that horrible painting on the wall? My daughter painted that… I have a daughter who is a terrible artist.” Fact: in several video interviews with Shirley (including one released as a bonus feature on Ornette: Made In America, which also came out last November) and in many of her letters and diaries, Clarke talked about how extremely proud she was of her daughter Wendy and her art. Mother and daughter worked happily together for years on many projects including the legendary Tee Pee Video Space Troupe. Wendy’s fine art, textiles, and video work have received critical praise for nearly 50 years. It was needlessly and maliciously hurtful for the filmmakers to include a line that is so obviously false and unkind.
In the film, “Shirley” says her maiden name was Bermberg. She was born Shirley Brimberg.
There is an Academy Award® statue for "Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World" in “Shirley’s” apartment and the other characters repeatedly mock her for it. The film did win an Oscar®, but although she received directing credit, Shirley had been fired from the final edit and producer Robert Hughes picked up the award. (You can see this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOS70Tqsz7U)
“Shirley” asks “Jason” to go up on the roof of the Hotel Chelsea with her to talk. In reality, her apartment was famously on the roof.
In the film, “Shirley” is unable to finish Portrait of Jason and tells everybody to go home and “Carl Lee” comes in to take over the film and save it. This is ludicrous, wrong and misogynistic. Clarke was a consummate film professional and all her collaborators attest to her skill and drive.
The film ends with a title card stating that Shirley died in New York (which is simply incorrect) and that Carl Lee died of a heroin overdose. Tragically, Lee died of AIDS and this information is in the Milestone press kit.
Another title card indicates that when Jason Holliday died that there were no friends or family listed in his one obituary. In truth, the Trentonian on July 31, 1998 wrote that two sisters, six nieces and two nephews survived him. We found the relatives when doing our research.
The filmmakers have labeled "Jason and Shirley" a satirical work of fiction. We are just not sure who or what they claim to be satirizing. The film is not ironic, humorous, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. We can only surmise that they are deliberately parodying the idea of cinematic integrity.
On behalf of Milestone, Wendy Clarke, and Shirley Clarke’s extended family and friends, we respectfully ask film fans not to base their appraisal of Clarke and her filmmaking on the unkind depictions in "Jason and Shirley."
Yours in cinema,
Amy Heller and Dennis Doros
Milestone Films...
- 6/23/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
One of the 25 films to be inducted for preservation in the 2010 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (Spike Lee's Malcolm X was on the short list that year), is the experimental film titled The Cry Of Jazz - a fascinating 34-minute critical analysis of Jazz music, directed by Ed Bland (an African American), his only film. He went on to a career as a composer, arranger, and producer for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, and on films like A Raisin In The Sun, Ganja And Hess, and The Cool World. Shot on 16mm black-and-white, on really no budget, with a volunteer cast and crew, the film is essentially a thesis on the structural correlation between black life in America and...
- 12/3/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
The legendary social documentarian, Frederick Wiseman, who made the 1968 fly on the wall documentary about interactions with teachers and their students at Northeast High School, simply entitled, High School, and other similar works entitled, Hospital, about NYC’s Metropolitan Hospital’s Ed, Domestic Violence,Public Housing,The Cool World, about life in a youth gang in Harlem, and Titicut Follies, about the inner workings of a mental institution in Massachusetts. He is probably the reason there are Hipaa privacy laws now in place, however, his films are riveting.
At Berkeley is a 4 hour documentary, as you may guess, goes inside the classrooms, administrative faculty staff meetings, and on campus arts and entertainment performances demonstrating the inner workings of one of the nations top universities. Wiseman quietly and non obtrusively places the camera on the subjects allowing people to be themselves and conduct business as usual without asking any questions. The viewer feels as if they are in the same room with the subjects.
Not surprisingly, many of the vignettes discuss the economics of what it’s like to attend the higher learning institution and the challenges faced to financially run the facility. Other discussions include, the minority viewpoint, how to fight inequality and how to make a difference, former graduates of the university discussing the differences from then and now, the new Facebook generation, a computer programmer who gets a robot to pick up a towel, a professor teaching his class about the concept of time and the laws of physics, e-legs, the lightweight battery powered exoskeleton, which gives paraplegics new legs, and gets them out of the wheelchair and walking onto their feet.The exoskeleton consists of a robotic frame controlled through crutches. The crutches contain sensors; putting forward the right crutch moves the left leg, and vice versa.
The eLEGS battery can enable a user to walk for one day before it needs to be recharged, according to the product’s developer Berkeley Bionics, how ordinary people are responsible for social change, however, do not get the credit they deserve, what drives leaders to make those changes? A class discussing Henry David Thoreau, a janitor cleaning up, people just walking along naturally in the hallways and courtyards, a student crying because she feels guilty that her parents have to work so hard for her to attend the school, priorities of people who spend $30,000 for a new car as opposed to higher learning, the lawnmower on campus, tenure, cancer research, the Free Speech Movement Cafe, television news crews interviewing a student discussing the California budget, and egalitarianism, tai chi, lunges, a tight rope walker. The classroom of Richard Reich, the American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator, who served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, and star of Inequality for All, discusses the organizations missions, and rewarding honesty.
Other discussions from a researcher on the Hep C virus, the Executive Vice President, layoffs, increase in tuition, salary cuts for faculty, their competitors Yale and Princeton, study groups and racial discrimination, dancing in the courtyard, their sports arena and marching band, military training, police activity, the Bart system, protestors, faces of students on a wall mural, a march held on Oct 7 with students who feel education should be free, the chancellor speaking to the media, the library, supernovas, the international admissions process, and reaching the brightest star, Sirius.
After watching four hours of footage, you feel as if you know your way around the campus without even needing a map, and as if you have received a degree from the University, without having paid the tuition.
Riveting!
The New York Film Festival (Sept. 27-Oct.13) is going on now. Los Angeles' own Rose Kuo (formerly director of the AFI FIlm Festival) has notched it up this year as our local newspaper L.A. Times has pointed out to us in perhaps a somewhat condescending way. Nyff was never a "quaint afterthought", but it was not what the Lincoln Center Film Society offered the trade with new offerings of films you can see in its spring festival New Directors/ New Directions. But this year, it is on the trade's map of top fall film festivals for the first time since 1984 when Blood Simple of the Coen Brothers made the trade realize its great value. Covering for SydneysBuzz in New York is Sharon Abella, an occasional writer for SydneysBuzz. Editor-in-chief of One World Cinema , an internationally-minded website about film, music and travel, Sharon Abella holds multiple degrees in the sciences, and she makes the point that this site would not be possible without the help of God, family, friends, and her life partner, Jon Kilik. We are happy to be able to post her articles on SydneysBuzz.
At Berkeley is a 4 hour documentary, as you may guess, goes inside the classrooms, administrative faculty staff meetings, and on campus arts and entertainment performances demonstrating the inner workings of one of the nations top universities. Wiseman quietly and non obtrusively places the camera on the subjects allowing people to be themselves and conduct business as usual without asking any questions. The viewer feels as if they are in the same room with the subjects.
Not surprisingly, many of the vignettes discuss the economics of what it’s like to attend the higher learning institution and the challenges faced to financially run the facility. Other discussions include, the minority viewpoint, how to fight inequality and how to make a difference, former graduates of the university discussing the differences from then and now, the new Facebook generation, a computer programmer who gets a robot to pick up a towel, a professor teaching his class about the concept of time and the laws of physics, e-legs, the lightweight battery powered exoskeleton, which gives paraplegics new legs, and gets them out of the wheelchair and walking onto their feet.The exoskeleton consists of a robotic frame controlled through crutches. The crutches contain sensors; putting forward the right crutch moves the left leg, and vice versa.
The eLEGS battery can enable a user to walk for one day before it needs to be recharged, according to the product’s developer Berkeley Bionics, how ordinary people are responsible for social change, however, do not get the credit they deserve, what drives leaders to make those changes? A class discussing Henry David Thoreau, a janitor cleaning up, people just walking along naturally in the hallways and courtyards, a student crying because she feels guilty that her parents have to work so hard for her to attend the school, priorities of people who spend $30,000 for a new car as opposed to higher learning, the lawnmower on campus, tenure, cancer research, the Free Speech Movement Cafe, television news crews interviewing a student discussing the California budget, and egalitarianism, tai chi, lunges, a tight rope walker. The classroom of Richard Reich, the American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator, who served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, and star of Inequality for All, discusses the organizations missions, and rewarding honesty.
Other discussions from a researcher on the Hep C virus, the Executive Vice President, layoffs, increase in tuition, salary cuts for faculty, their competitors Yale and Princeton, study groups and racial discrimination, dancing in the courtyard, their sports arena and marching band, military training, police activity, the Bart system, protestors, faces of students on a wall mural, a march held on Oct 7 with students who feel education should be free, the chancellor speaking to the media, the library, supernovas, the international admissions process, and reaching the brightest star, Sirius.
After watching four hours of footage, you feel as if you know your way around the campus without even needing a map, and as if you have received a degree from the University, without having paid the tuition.
Riveting!
The New York Film Festival (Sept. 27-Oct.13) is going on now. Los Angeles' own Rose Kuo (formerly director of the AFI FIlm Festival) has notched it up this year as our local newspaper L.A. Times has pointed out to us in perhaps a somewhat condescending way. Nyff was never a "quaint afterthought", but it was not what the Lincoln Center Film Society offered the trade with new offerings of films you can see in its spring festival New Directors/ New Directions. But this year, it is on the trade's map of top fall film festivals for the first time since 1984 when Blood Simple of the Coen Brothers made the trade realize its great value. Covering for SydneysBuzz in New York is Sharon Abella, an occasional writer for SydneysBuzz. Editor-in-chief of One World Cinema , an internationally-minded website about film, music and travel, Sharon Abella holds multiple degrees in the sciences, and she makes the point that this site would not be possible without the help of God, family, friends, and her life partner, Jon Kilik. We are happy to be able to post her articles on SydneysBuzz.
- 10/1/2013
- by Sharon Abella
- Sydney's Buzz
One of the 25 films to be inducted for preservation in the 2010 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (Spike Lee's Malcolm X was on the short list that year), the experimental film titled The Cry Of Jazz - a fascinating 34-minute critical analysis of Jazz music, directed by Ed Bland (an African American) - his only film. He went on to a career as a composer, arranger, and producer for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, and on films like A Raisin In The Sun, Ganja And Hess, and The Cool World. Shot on 16mm black-and-white, on really no budget, with a volunteer cast and crew, the film is essentially a thesis on the structural correlation between black life in America and...
- 9/20/2012
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Today is underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke‘s birthday. She was born on Oct. 2, 1919 and passed away on Sept. 23, 1997.
She is mostly well-known for her two jazz-themed narrative feature films The Connection (1960) and The Cool World (1963); as well as the 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason. However, she also directed numerous short films, such as Bullfight (1955) and Bridges-Go-Round (1958-59).
In the ’70s and early ’80s, she taught filmmaking at UCLA and continued to make short films, but returned to feature filmmaking with the 1985 documentary Ornette: Made in America.
In the below video, Edinburgh International Film Festival programmer Niall Greig Fulton reviews the retrospective the fest held of Clarke’s work in 2008. The video also includes clips from her films:...
She is mostly well-known for her two jazz-themed narrative feature films The Connection (1960) and The Cool World (1963); as well as the 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason. However, she also directed numerous short films, such as Bullfight (1955) and Bridges-Go-Round (1958-59).
In the ’70s and early ’80s, she taught filmmaking at UCLA and continued to make short films, but returned to feature filmmaking with the 1985 documentary Ornette: Made in America.
In the below video, Edinburgh International Film Festival programmer Niall Greig Fulton reviews the retrospective the fest held of Clarke’s work in 2008. The video also includes clips from her films:...
- 10/2/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Thanks to reader Jake for alerting me to this. A film I completely overlooked (and really shouldn’t have) that was also one of the 25 films to be inducted for preservation in the 2010 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress (yesterday I announced that Spike Lee’s Malcolm X was on the short list).
The experimental film is titled The Cry Of Jazz – a fascinating 34-minute critical analysis of Jazz music, directed by Ed Bland (an African American) – his only film. He went on to a career as a composer, arranger, and producer for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, and on films like A Raisin In The Sun, Ganja And Hess, and The Cool World.
Shot on 16mm black-and-white, on no budget, with a volunteer cast and crew, the film is essentially a thesis on the structural correlation between black life in America and jazz music. Indeed, Bland wrote a book on the matter,...
The experimental film is titled The Cry Of Jazz – a fascinating 34-minute critical analysis of Jazz music, directed by Ed Bland (an African American) – his only film. He went on to a career as a composer, arranger, and producer for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, and on films like A Raisin In The Sun, Ganja And Hess, and The Cool World.
Shot on 16mm black-and-white, on no budget, with a volunteer cast and crew, the film is essentially a thesis on the structural correlation between black life in America and jazz music. Indeed, Bland wrote a book on the matter,...
- 12/29/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
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