There’s been a great deal of talk recently in our film community about the concept of sustainability. There hasn’t, however, been a great deal of precision. Take the word itself — “sustainable.” It’s most often defined by its absence. But by the time we ask, “What is a sustainable career?” the answer comes back, and it’s usually simply: “Not this.” We’ve adopted the idea of sustainability from the environmental movement, where it describes the quest to make an ecosystem stable and long-lasting. Sustainability’s myriad definitions range from the utopian (“all systems in dynamic balance”) to the terse, harsh pragmatism of its Latin root, […]

“Free love? That’s the only love I can afford!” Stephen Winter’s Jason and Shirley is no mere behind-the-scenes reenactment of the circumstances that would add up to Shirley Clarke’s seminal 1967 Portrait of Jason, but rather a full-bore interrogation of what Clarke’s documentary cost its participants during shooting. To those ends, the film’s rendition of gay hustler Jason Holliday (portrayed here by Jack Waters) is remarkable: it sketches out Jason’s dreams and nightmares in brazenly emotional flights of inward fancy, made all the more jarring by Waters’ unflinching, body-pressurized performance. As Clarke, writer Sarah Schulman gives off an uncanny with-it […]