(8 drug addicts wait for their "connection". A budding fil...)
8 drug addicts wait for their "connection". A budding filmmaker has agreed to pay for the fix if the addicts will allow him to film them. The junkies then talk the director into trying heroin to better understand the subject.
Documentarian Shirley Clarke captures Ornette Coleman's evolution over three decades. The film explores the rhythms, images and myths of America seen through the eyes of an artist's ever-expanding imagination and experience.
Shirley Clarke was an American experimental and independent filmmaker. She was a leading figure in American avant-garde cinema in the 1950s and ’60s, and a pioneer of video art in the ’70s.
Background
Ethnicity:
Clarke's father was a Polish immigrant, and her mother was of Jewish descent.
Shirley Clarke was born on October 2, 1919, in New York City, New York, the United States, to a Polish-immigrant, a wealthy manufacturer Samuel L. Brimberg, and Florence Rosenberg Brimberg. Her mother was the daughter of a multimillionaire Jewish manufacturer and inventor. Her sister was the writer Elaine Dundy. Despite the privileges of their wealth, the Brimbergs’ home life was difficult because of Samuel's temper and physical abuse, and Shirley and her father often clashed. Her interest in dance began at an early age but met with the disapproval of her father, a violent bully.
Education
Clarke was educated at Lincoln School, Manhattan. Clarke also attended Stephens College, Johns Hopkins University, Bennington College, and the University of North Carolina. As a result of dance lessons at each of these schools, she trained under the Martha Graham technique, the Humphrey-Weidman technique, and the Hanya Holm method of modern dance.
Shirley Clarke was an established leader in the documentary film industry during the 1950s and 1960s. Clarke’s “films, which exemplify the artistic directions of the independent movement,” according to Lauren Rabinowitz in the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, “are classic examples of the best work of American independent filmmaking.” With a background as a professional dancer, Clarke’s first works were centered on dance and the performance stage. Her first film was an adaptation of David Nagrin’s Dance in the Sun, in which she used editing methods to choreograph new cinematic space and rhythms. After studying filmmaking with Hans Richter at City College of New York, Clarke expanded out of the dance arena to subjects of more universal interest. Clarke made her mark in the film industry with her adaptations of cinema verite documentaries to full-length dramatic productions.
Clarke’s unique style is evident in her film entitled The Connection, where the camera itself is part of the film. The camera represents the viewer and insists on audience participation in a film that centers on a 'group of drug addicts hanging out. The actors are confronted with the presence of the camera and thus react to it; they glare at it, make fun of it, and turn away trying to avoid its constant stare. Gideon Bachman remarked in Film Quarterly, “The Connection is antifilmic in the sense that it does not explain but present, and that only to the extent that nature presents itself to the artist to be molded in his vision.”
Using a similar style of filmmaking, Clarke dramatizes a story on black street gangs in The Cool World. “For all its brusque cutting, disjointed narrative, and frustrating half-glances at its characters, [The Cool World] is the most important film document about Negro life in Harlem to have been made so far,” wrote Albert Johnson in Film Quarterly. The story focuses on members of a gang called the Royal Pythons, who create their own dialogue for the film. Much of the action of the film deals with the routine of the gang, the quarrels, fights, and crime which contribute to Harlem’s violence and corruption. The gang attitude toward the white world is a negative one, with members rejecting anything remotely associated with whites. There is an undercurrent of anti-white anger - the black brother will not only achieve success but will surpass any accomplishment achieved by the white boys. However, the struggle for self-improvement is presented as a hopeless attempt. The cool attitude must be maintained by emotional control and repressed turmoil, hiding the realization that the black man actually needs the white world.
Stressing stark truth and brutal realism in her films, Clarke fought for the removal of the censorship rules imposed by the state of New York. Using The Connection as her test case, she fought the courts for the inclusion of words that were crucial to the accurate depiction of drug addicts. She won a Supreme Court case that eventually opened the way for freedom of speech in filmmaking.
During the period between 1971 and 1974 Clarke led a number of Teepee touring workshops in a variety of venues and institutions including the Kitchen, the Museum of Modern art ('Open Circuits'), Antioch College, Baltimore, Wesleyan College, Bucknell University, Film Study Center, Hampshire College and the University of Buffalo. Clarke became a professor at UCLA in 1975, teaching film and video until 1985.
After working on video films for several years at the Hotel Chelsea, Clarke was approached by Roger Corman to work on his next film, Crazy Mama (1975). This sparked disagreements over creative approaches. Clarke realized that Corman was expecting a protègé without film experience. In a 1985 interview, Clarke stated that she did not believe the situation would have occurred had she been a male filmmaker: "Clearly he couldn't be talking to an established filmmaker who had gotten prizes and stuff. He didn't know who I was at all. [...] Would he ever talk to a man like that? He didn't trust me, that's for sure. There's deep discrimination against women artists that is still very strong. I was a representative of tokenism. I was relied on to be the woman filmmaker. No one person can carry that burden. There's no question that my career would have been different if I was a man, but if I was a man I would be a different human being."
Although Clarke did not explore feminist themes overtly in her films, feminist struggles can be interpreted through the subtext of her works. Clarke describes the impact her experience as a woman had on her filmmaking: "There are several reasons why I succeeded at all. One, I had enough money that I didn't have to become a secretary to survive. And secondly, I have developed this personality, this way of being. [...] I happen to have chosen a field where I have to be out there, to constantly connect, to be in charge of vast amounts of money, equipment, and people. And that is not particularly a woman's role in our society. [...] I identified with black people because I couldn't deal with the woman question and I transposed it. I could understand very easily the black problems, and I somehow equated them to how I felt. When I did The Connection, which was about junkies, I knew nothing about junk and cared less. It was a symbol - people who are on the outside. I always felt alone and on the outside of the culture that I was in. I grew up in a time when women weren't running things. They still aren't."
Connections
Shirley Clarke married Bert Clarke to escape her father's control. They were married from 1944 to 1956. The couple had a daughter.