Armed with the eye of an Italian neo-realist and a New York sensibility, Shirley Clarke's films stand as benchmarks of the American new wave, influencing directors from John Cassavetes to Martin Scorsese. Initially trained as a dancer, Clarke intuitively displays a synchronicity among on-screen performance, camera, audio and editing. Continually exploring the boundaries between fiction and documentary, Clarke's lens was more than a recording device; it was a provocateur exploring the cinematic bond between actor, filmmaker and viewer.

Films Include THE CONNECTION, ROBERT FROST: A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD, THE COOL WORLD, and PORTRAIT OF JASON!

THE CONNECTION

This beat-inflected study depicts a documentarian's efforts to capture the drug scene as seen through a group of heroin addicts waiting for their connection, Cowboy-the super cool Carl Lee who plays an interviewer in PORTRAIT OF JASON, a priest in THE COOL WORLD and was Clarke's on-again, off-again partner of 30 years. Taken from the renowned Living Theater stage play, with music performed on-screen by jazz great Jackie McLean. Clarke opened THE CONNECTION to a rapturous audience in Cannes, but faced an uphill censorship battle back in the US that delayed the film's release by a year and a half.

DIR/PROD Shirley Clarke; SCR Jack Gelber; PROD Lewis M. Allen. US, 1962, color, 110 min. NOT RATED

Friday, March 16, 10:10; Saturday, March 17, 12:45; Sunday, March 1, 9:35; Monday, March 19, 9:00; Tuesday, March 20, 8:30

ROBERT FROST: A LOVER'S QUARREL WITH THE WORLD

Clarke's Academy Award-winning documentary is an intimate portrait of Robert Frost completed before his death at age 88. Crosscutting his professional life as a public figure and honored poet laureate with the private man at his home in Vermont, this documentary achieves remarkable insight into an American icon. Proceeded by SKYSCRAPER, this Academy Award-winning short features a jazzy score of beat-style poems and songs blended with the voices of actors playing construction workers as they construct the Tishman Building on Fifth Avenue in New York.

DIR/SCR Shirley Clarke; PROD Robert Hughes. US, 1963, b&w, 52 min. NR

Sunday, March 25, 3:30; Tuesday, March 27, 7:00; Wednesday, March 28, 7:00

"It gives the shattering details of an excellent newspaper exposé and binds it with the conviction of staggering imagery." - New York Times

THE COOL WORLD

Produced by famed documentarian Frederick Wiseman and propelled by the sounds of Dizzy Gillespie, this fictional snapshot of teenagers surrounded by pimps, prostitutes and corrupt cops in turbulent 1960s Harlem packs a punch still undiminished several decades later. The enigmatic Duke is a wannabe gangster who dreams of procuring guns so he can walk tall with the thugs he idolizes.

DIR/SCR Shirley Clarke, based on the novel by Warren Miller; PROD Robert Hughes. US, 1963, b&w, 52 min. NOT RATED

Friday, March 30, 9:00; Saturday, March 31, 10:30; Monday, April 2, 9:00

"The most fascinating film I've ever seen." - Ingmar Bergman

PORTRAIT OF JASON

PORTRAIT OF JASON is an unflinching portrait of Jason Holliday, an openly gay African-American hustler who speaks frankly and explicitly of his childhood in Alabama, his life as a prostitute and his dreams of cabaret stardom. Through a cloud of marijuana smoke and a bottle of vodka, Jason performs, philosophizes and wails through this compelling and challenging classic.

DIR/SCR/PROD Shirley Clarke. US, 1967, b&w, 105 min. NOT RATED

Monday, April 9, 8:45; Tuesday April 10, 9:20