Shirley Clarke
The Passionate Life and Radical Works of an Exceptional Filmmaker
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Shirley Clarke (1919–1997) was an American independent filmmaker, electronic media pioneer, and teacher who resisted the norm wherever life brought her. A decade after receiving her first camera as a wedding present, Clarke launched her film career with the short Dance in the Sun (1953). Her documentary Skyscraper (1959) garnered an Academy Award nomination, and her first feature film, The Connection (1961), adapted from Jack Gelber's off-Broadway play portraying artists with heroin addictions, sparked attention when the State of New York censored it for obscenity. While Clarke's documentary Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963) won an Oscar, she is perhaps best known for directing Portrait of Jason (1967), which features an interview with a gay Black man openly discussing his life as an entertainer and sex worker, his successes, and his experiences with discrimination. Until now, Clarke's legacy has been largely pushed to history's margins.
In Shirley Clarke, author Laurence Kardish presents a vivid portrait of a filmmaker whose life was often at odds with the societal expectations of a privileged woman born in twentieth-century New York City―a woman who admitted to being deeply conflicted about motherhood and who advocated for reproductive rights. Frequently allowing Clarke to speak through her diaries, this biography traces her life from birth to modern dance training, personal relationships, struggles with mental illness, video adventures on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel, and collaborations with creatives like Agnès Varda, Sam Shepard, and Ornette Coleman. Kardish offers an up-close account of a rebel who battled convention to depict the raw truth on screen, a filmmaker whose countercultural impact and innovations in diverse media deserve wider attention.
About the Author:
Laurence Kardish is the former senior curator in the Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film, where his career spanned more than forty years and where he organized over a thousand film exhibitions covering the history and culture of the moving image. In the mid-1960s, Kardish worked at the Film-makers' Distribution Center with artists such as Shirley Clarke, Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol. He now teaches at New York's School of Visual Arts and codirects an annual festival, FilmColumbia, in Chatham, New York.
Press Reviews:
"I cannot envision a more perfect union of author and literary subject. The account Kardish provides here is a vivid evocation―of a web, an ecosystem, a 'moveable feast,' the material evidence of which proves increasingly lost to popular memory and time. Kardish's involvement with and clear passion for Clarke render this book a joy to read."―Daniel Kremer, filmmaker and author of Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films
"This book is an intriguing reminder of how an artist's maturation in one aesthetic―in Shirley Clarke's case, dance―can develop and thrive in another, such as film. My own trajectory, from dance to film and back to choreography, afforded me an especial interest in this thoroughly researched volume. It is an essential read, especially for aspiring artists."―Yvonne Rainer, American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker
"A cineaste's intimate tale of a truly bohemian artist, with cultural and artistic context enough for a film studies class assignment. Shirley implicitly broke establishment rules, creating brand-new ways of making and thinking about moving pictures."―Skip Blumberg, Producer and Filmmaker
"Larry Kardish has written the definitive biography of one of the great mavericks of American filmmaking. In elegant and vivid prose, he takes you back to a time and place when film, and filmmakers, were at the heart of 20th Century New York City life. At the center and at the margin, both, was the great Shirley Clarke, whose life, it turns out, was as original and passionate as her movies. In Kardish's hands, Clarke's singular and intimate story becomes one with the birth of the American cinematic avant-garde."―Ira Sachs, Filmmaker and Founding Director of QueerArt
See the publisher website: University Press of Kentucky
See the complete filmography of Shirley Clarke on the website: IMDB ...
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