Clark's film often frames Jason out of focus, just out of reach, a fascinating enigma seen through the haze of celluloid, a lie at 24 frames per second.

| Jun 2, 2022

Winter's complex imagining of the episode sees Portrait's creation as a standoff between two sides of a race/class divide.

| Sep 20, 2021

Shirley Clarke's latest film is an extraordinary interview, two hours of startling, candid self-revelation of Jason Holiday.

| May 28, 2020

Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason is an extremely significant movie which must be seen by anyone with serious regard for the medium.

| Jan 31, 2020

Both a fascinating look at one man's life and a self-aware critique of documentary filmmaking, Portrait of Jason is challenging but essential viewing.

| Jun 20, 2019

[PODCAST] Shirley Clarke's 1967 cinéma vérité masterpiece remains a scathing social and character study of race in America for the enigmatic quality of its unreliable subject, Jason Holliday (nee Aaron Payne, 1924-1998).

| Original Score: A+ | Mar 20, 2018

Born Aaron Payne, Jason Holiday gives the performance of any lifetime, and it is superb artifice.

| Jan 29, 2016

The larger truth is that Jason, who died in obscurity in 1998, and [Portrait of Jason] still have things to teach us about the nature of race, sex, and success in America.

| Sep 30, 2015

Jason's surnames have a Dickensian interpretive quality: The invented 'Holliday' testifies to his wish for a life of celebrity ease, while birth-name 'Payne' seems appropriate to his stories of a rough Southern childhood and a stay in a 'nut house.'

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 29, 2015

A reminder that character is the heart of drama, even in a documentary made on a shoestring.

| Dec 2, 2014

Jason's simultaneously funny and tragic, and almost heroic in the way he keeps eluding director Shirley Clarke's efforts to pin him down.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 10, 2014

This unscripted and uncompromising study of a self-proclaimed street hustler is a fine example of the pioneering film movement of cinema verité.

| Original Score: B+ | Oct 18, 2014

A non-stop, fascinating monologue that is enormously entertaining.

| Jun 27, 2014

Melancholy joie de vivre permeates every instant in the film, made to look as ragged as possible yet elegant in its simple, loving directness: look at him.

| Apr 8, 2014

Like any star turn, Holliday's performance rings utterly true. It's that indefinable but unmistakable reality-beyond-reality called art.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 11, 2013

This is a film way ahead of its time.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 15, 2013

Whether Jason is laughing or crying, he holds you rapt with tales that conceal as much as they reveal.

| May 2, 2013

A mesmerizing journey into experimental filmmaking.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 23, 2013

Serves as a sideways time capsule, creating a blurry snapshot of an Afro-camp subculture during the era of Christopher Street bar raids and burn-baby-burn rioting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 16, 2013

Shirley Clarke counters Jason's queen-bitch attitude by reminding us with vocal and technological interjections that this is a performance, and that aesthetic judgments have been made while recording it.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 16, 2013