Dear friends of Portrait of Jason,
A kind backer pointed out that they haven't heard from us in a while and so, my apologies that we haven't written an update in quite some time!
The bad news is that we have been so deep in the digitization/preservation/restoration of the ephemera of Shirley Clarke, that we have been slow in producing the DVD and BluRays of PORTRAIT OF JASON.
The good news is that we have found some incredible material that will make the release particularly cool. We found audio outtakes from the film where Jason tells a few more stories, including the big confrontation with Shirley Clarke that she based the film on. We have found a 1967 short film that she did with her daughter Wendy that has not been seen since the one screening that year. The list goes on and on. We hope to have everything to the authoring/compression lab later this next week and have DVDs and BluRays out to you this summer.
As importantly, though not for this project, we have really extended Project Shirley to create what easily maybe the most ambitious for-profit (well, in theory at least) exploration of a director's work. We have digitized her short films, her home movies dating back to her childhood in the 1920s, her unfinished films that were never screened, her test films and outtakes leading up to some of her great short films of the 1950s (including a few films featuring the choreography of her great friend, the legendary Anna Sokolow), her work in the 1970s with the Teepee Video Space Troupe, interviews with her dating back to 1956 and some later in life that were tremendously revealing and never seen. Many archives around the world were involved as well as her friend, the great filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker who provided a few of the films from Brussels Loops, the work they did together for the 1957 World's Fair. There is easily over a hundred hours of work digitized. And better yet, there will be an entire release featuring the best of these treasures that will give an amazing overview of Shirley Clarke's life that will change the way we look at her, but also at 20th century indie filmmaking.
And though there were some material we couldn't obtain, we were able to identify a film by Harry Smith as a co-creation of Shirley's. We found an interview by Shirley done in 1969 where she said that Warhol heard of Shirley's plan to film Jason and stole him to do a film first. Well, with the help of the Warhol people, that reel (never released) has just been discovered now!
In fact, there is so much, that there will also be a documentary on her life to be created by Milestone's friend, Immy Humes, the fine Oscar-nominated director of A LITTLE VICIOUS and her brilliant film about her father, Doc Humes, titled naturally, DOC. Doc was a friend and admirer of Shirley's and Immy group up in that world, so we thought this particularly fitting. There will be a party to kick off the start of the filmming on April 26th in Brooklyn. Anyone interested in attending, please email me (Dennis) at
milefilms@gmail.com
If you have any questions please feel free to email us at anytime! We may have been silent, but we have been consumed by Project Shirley. We hope you will like the results!
