Shirley Clarke

Three actors in Hollywood live and love together. A director comes from New York to make a movie about actors and Hollywood.

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

Spoof science fiction. An alien mother and her child are pursued across England by a bunch of incompetent government agents and take refuge in a house full of vampires. Homage back to the camp tone of British directors of the 1970's such as Ken Russell, (The Lair Of The White Worm), Robert Fuest, (Dr Phibes Rises Again), and Joe McGrath, (The Magic Christian). Distributed by Troma in the U.S., it contains violence, nudity and exploding bagpipes.

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.

The film consists of continuous panning shots up a series of 367 human legs.

On October 9, 1972, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse hosted an exhibition of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s work, designed by Fluxus artist George Maciunas. That same day, friends including Ringo Starr, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Krassner gathered to celebrate Lennon’s birthday. Jonas Mekas’s film records the event in both image and sound, capturing the spirit of the moment and the community around Lennon and Ono.

UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Interviewees sit in the Modnar Machine and reflect on contemporary life, from war, to television, identity, self-perception, with abstractions in sound and visuals creating a feedback loop.

A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixities, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever. A German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties revolution in art, music, poetry and film and interviews the main players in the “New American Cinema,” that was born on the streets of New York. Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval in all of the arts and growing political agitation against the Vietnam War, Bachman interviews the most prominent figures in “underground film,” including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers and Bruce Connor, and visits the most notorious location in the New York art world of the era - Andy Warhol’s Factory - to conduct an interview with the genius of Pop Art himself.

Sex star gives an explosive behind the scenes view of the people who make sexual fantasies come true on the silver screen. Sex Stars is the first feature documentary made by Lech Kowalski.

"The whole film are non-art portraits of people in which they do what they want with this hat – and therefore, act or stand in front of my camera. It’s only love: therefore it can’t harm you". Joyce Wieland.

A "film poem" that focuses on the Beat poetry scene of the late 1950s.

Interview with Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne. House-boy, would-be cabaret performer, and self-proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked, pill-popped view of what it was like to be black and gay in 1960s United States.

In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

Based on interviews with 15 women, including directors, producers and film actresses, a journey around the world is made, seeing the wars waged by each one against economic and political repression, bombs, police dogs, censors, etc. Images from England, New York, Brazil, South Africa.

A short, Filmstruck-produced documentary on the life of director Shirley Clarke.

Documentary about filmmaker Shirley Clarke which originally aired on the French television series “Cinéastes de notre temps”.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.

A fifteen-year-old boy wants to buy a gun from an adult racketeer named Priest, in order to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem.

A fifteen-year-old boy wants to buy a gun from an adult racketeer named Priest, in order to become president of the gang to which he belongs, and to return them to active "bopping" (gang fighting) which has declined in Harlem.

Eight drug addicts are waiting for their connection in a New York apartment while a two-man documentary team films the proceedings. Things go out of control as the men grow increasingly nervous and the cameraman keeps recording.

Home Movies #20: Dance Tests dates from 1953 and shows Shirley Clarke working on her film technique before she shot her first "official" film later that year--'Dance in the Sun' starring the dancer Daniel Nagrin.

Yoko & John Party hold. Recycled with Paul Ryan's video tape. This is interesting beacuse of your showing Paul Ryan's tape. 1st part is home movie tape stuff at a party for John & Yoko.

Shirley Clarke's frenetic documentary about multi-talented musician Ornette Coleman.

A couple in love interacts across a multitude of environments.

A Visual Diary is a look at a private moment in one's life. A narrative form without utilizing a story line. The collaboration incorporates naturalistic non-verbal theater and dance techniques with photographs providing the environment.

Part of the larger filmic Four Journeys Into Mystic Time, in this work director Shirley Clarke makes use of a dancer’s body not only as the primary performer, but also as a canvas on which to paint projected images. Further enhanced by editing and effective use of shadows, the film is a transformative experience.

A prelude to Tongues (1982) which languishes over love and its effect on people.

Interview with Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne. House-boy, would-be cabaret performer, and self-proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked, pill-popped view of what it was like to be black and gay in 1960s United States.

Interview with Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne. House-boy, would-be cabaret performer, and self-proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked, pill-popped view of what it was like to be black and gay in 1960s United States.

The acclaimed poet is examined in this film completed just prior to his death at age 88, with his speaking engagements at Amherst and Sarah Lawrence Colleges intercut with studies of his work, as well as with scenes of his life in rural Vermont and personal reminiscences about his career. He is also seen receiving an award from President Kennedy and touring an aircraft carrier. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2006.

Nominated for an Academy Award, this live-action short film playfully chronicles the construction of the Tishman Building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Nominated for an Academy Award, this live-action short film playfully chronicles the construction of the Tishman Building at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

A performance piece written by Sam Shepard, enacted by Joseph Chaikin and directed by Shirley Clarke, a dying man reflects on his life while delivering his own last rites.

A collection of twenty short films, averaging 2-3 minutes, by various filmmakers depicting American life, intended to be shown in a continuous loop at the American Pavilion of the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. Some releases of the film include ten extra minutes of rough cuts.

Left to viewer interpretation, this beautiful dance piece displays a spiritual or religious initiation. A short work, this film was released as part of Shirley Clarke’s Four Journeys Into Mystic Time.

A highly edited work complimenting an exhibit on Persian art in the Los Angeles Museum of Art.

A 1957 rehearsal film test for a dance film inspired by Pablo Picasso's 'Family of Saltimbanques'. Anna Sokolow can be seen on the lower left of the frame. Based on the script found in Shirley Clarke's collection, this looks to be a complete version of Ms. Sokolow's choreography for Act One of the film. Plot subtitles are taken from Shirley Clarke's script. Pierrot and Pierrette's duet transformed into Shirley Clarke's 1957 dance film 'A Moment in Love'.

Choreographer Daniel Nagrin performs in a studio and in the sun.

Last Ricky tape as I try to pre-answer questions for MOMA show. Then we all tape (bogart) meaning we hand camera around. Ricky et. al. watch the "Arrest" tape.

In 1953, Shirley Clarke went to make a film about French mime Ettiene Decroux. The legend goes that he had left town and instead, she created In Paris Parks. Not known, is that in 1955, Clarke tried a second time to make a film about Decroux. This is the unfinished workprint.