Tag: Blackstar Film Festival

A Stray

A StrayRelease Date:  8/5/16; Blackstar Film Festival
Genre:  Drama
Rating:  NR
Running Time:  82 mins.
Director:  Musa Syeed
Studio:  Vilcek Foundation

Cast:   Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Christina Baldwin, Ayla, Fathia Absie, Jamaal “Happy Khalif” Farah, Abdullahi Haji-Mohamed, Ifrah Mansour, Rhiana Yazzie, George McCauley.

Story:  In Minneapolis’ large Somali refugee community, Adan has nowhere to go.  His mom kicked him out, and his friends are tired of his headstrong ways.  As a last resort, he moves into the mosque, praying for a little help.  Surprisingly, God seems to answer.  Adan quickly lands a good job, devout friends, and a newfound faith.  When Adan nearly hits a stray dog on the job, he’s forced to take it in for a night.  But one of his new mosque friends considers the dog impure, and he throws Adan out.  With Adan back on the streets, surrounded by his old crew, ex-girlfriends, prying FBI agents, and his estranged family, the dog may be his only friend as he tries to keep his faith and get through the night.  Source(s):  sxsw.com.

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Jason and Shirley

Jason and Shirley stillRelease Date:  8/7/16; Blackstar Film Festival (2015)
Genre:  Biography/Drama
Rating:  NR
Running Time:  79 mins.
Black & White
Director:  Stephen Winter
Cast:  Jack Waters, Sarah Schulman, Eamon Fahey, Tristan Cowen, Tony Torn, Peter Cramer, Mike Bailey-Gates, Bryan Webster, Denise Dixon, Orran Farmer.

Story:  Based on a true story, Jason and Shirley thrillingly recreates the dark, electrifying, take-no-prisoners 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.

When Academy Award-winning filmmaker Shirley Clarke made her groundbreaking avant-garde documentary, it was the first-ever feature film about being a black gay man.  Her subject was raconteur, entertainer, and self-professed hustler, Jason Holliday, whom Clarke interviewed for twelve hours straight in her Chelsea Hotel penthouse.

Over the course of the evening, questions went from the anodyne (“What do you for a living, Jason?”) to the arch (“Why you’d do that to me? Rotten queen!”).  In the final product, we see only Holliday onscreen, smoking joints and drinking copious amounts of whiskey as he seems to suffer a slow breakdown at the hands of Clarke and a co-interviewer.  Source(s):  Official Facebook page; NPR; IMDB.

Trailer:

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