Jack Waters
Acting
Biography
Jack Waters is an American visual artist, film maker, writer, media artist, choreographer and performer.
Known For
The Murder of Stephen Lawrence
Stephen Lawrence was a black London teenager murdered by white racists in 1993. His parents fought to have the crime properly investigated, culminating in a judicial enquiry into the event itself and also the inadequacies of the ensuing investigation by the London Metropolitan Police.
Goodbye Seventies
In the 1970s, the golden age of gay pornography in New York City, a promising chorus boy is injured and told he will never dance again. Distraught and unimpressed with the "art" films playing seedy Times Square theaters, he gets his friends and lovers together and they start making their own hardcore movies. Against all odds the films are wildly successful until drugs, AIDS and cheap video technology bring it all crashing down
Thicker Than Water
Debbie and Jo are identical twins. After Jo is killed in a car accident, Debbie starts to act increasingly like Jo. Mysterious circumstances lead Jo's widower Sam to suspect that the accident wasn't an accident at all.
Jason and Shirley
Based on a true story, Jason and Shirley recreates the 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.
Swimming to the End of the World
A world-weary gay man remembers lost lovers as he swims from the Christopher Street Piers in New York City to Provincetown, Massachusetts.
A Morning with Jack Waters
In conversation with filmmaker Lynne Sachs, multi-disciplinary artist Jack Waters discusses his career and experiences as a part of the downtown New York City art scene from the early 80s to the present. Filmed in Jack’s home on the Lower East Side on February 15th, 2018.
Beyond Queer: Voices from Bohemia
Former Warhol Superstar and creator of the seminal sexual politics performance spectacular Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!, Penny Arcade, washed up on the shores of the Lower East Side of New York as a teenager in 1967. After decades in the Downtown art world, Penny’s personal relationships with dozens of outrageous characters, from the world famous to the fascinatingly obscure, led to the creation of the Lower East Side Biography Project, an oral history of New York’s Bohemian culture from the 1950s to the present. These half-hour biographies have broadcast weekly on Time Warner Manhattan Cable Television for 20 years. Beyond Queer is a feature documentary compiled from these television interviews.
You Can't Stay Here
Rick, a photographer, witnesses the brutal murder of a gay man in Central Park. With the cops taking little interest in the crime, a dangerous and sexy game of cat and mouse ensues between Rick and the killer, Adam.
Black & White Study
An exploration of chiaroscuro, nudes, movement and film techniques in constantly shifting fields of perception. Eroticism and humor highlight an interracial couple engaged in a tableau vivant of opposites and attractions.
Jason and Shirley Revisited
A radical revisitation. This updated version of Stephen Winter’s 2015 film unearths the ghosts of Jason and Shirley, restaging the volatile 12-hour shoot of the 1967 documentary Portrait of Jason—held at the Chelsea Hotel—which blurred the line between subject and storyteller. Jason Holliday, a sharp-witted Black gay man, whose identity splits between personas–performer, hustler, muse, provocateur–is once again in the room with Shirley Clarke, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who insisted on framing his life. Now, with newly unearthed footage, the director returns 10 years later, not to resolve the contradictions, but to reopen them. What was once a document becomes a haunting, a conversation with what was left outside the frame. Time folds. Power shifts. And Jason, still impossible to contain, speaks back.
Filmography
as Businessman
as Eddie
as Himself
as Jason
as Reporter
as Mini-Cab Man
as Himself