"There's a spectre haunting modern documentary filmmaking-the eternal return of Jason Holliday, the subject of Shirley Clarke's 1967 film " Portrait of Jason." It's not the first portrait film but it's the definitive one-not least because its raison d'être is built into it. Holliday, an unsuccessful actor, gives of himself with a reckless, unself-sparing profligacy, and Clarke turns the audiovisual recording of him into a work of art in itself, one in which Holliday's presence and performance aren't merely preserved but enshrined and exalted."
"Portrait films-whether promotional celebrations, like " Joan Baez: I Am a Noise," or more reserved observational works, such as " Honeyland," have become a staple of nonfiction cinema. With proliferation has come predictability, but right now there are some notable portrait films of admirable originality. By virtue of distinctive approaches to form and a willingness to foreground and explore the relationship between filmmaker and subject, these documentaries both honor and extend the legacy of Clarke's film and Holliday's performance."
"The strangest and most mysterious of them, Robinson Devor's "Suburban Fury," was one of the highlights of last year's New York Film Festival and is only now opening, at the Alamo Drafthouse, in a slightly different cut that refines its dramatic arc. Its subject is Sara Jane Moore, who, in San Francisco, in 1975, attempted to assassinate then President Gerald Ford. She was arrested, pleaded guilty, was sentenced to life in prison, and was released on parole in 2007, at the age of seventy-seven."
Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason serves as a defining model for modern portrait films because Jason Holliday's unguarded performance is enshrined and exalted by Clarke's audiovisual treatment. Portrait films have proliferated across nonfiction cinema, ranging from promotional celebrations like Joan Baez: I Am a Noise to observational works such as Honeyland, producing a mix of predictability and originality. Recent portrait documentaries stand out through distinctive formal approaches and by explicitly examining the relationship between filmmaker and subject. Robinson Devor's Suburban Fury profiles Sara Jane Moore, recounting her 1975 assassination attempt on President Gerald Ford and subsequent arrest, conviction, and parole.
Read at The New Yorker
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