Early Clarke: Experimental & Dance Films

Shirley Clarke was brilliant, courageous, provocative and incredibly talented. Had she been a man, film historians would long since have counted her among the great auteur filmmakers alongside Orson Welles and John Cassavetes. Even in her short works, one can recognise the great individualist: as a true artist, she combines her mischief and thirst for adventure with the aesthetics of a dancer and her enormous sense of justice, using these to create films that challenge and enchant. In this programme, it is not only dancers who are choreographed, but also people in Parisian parks or on bridges in New York City who are set in motion on film. The controversial short film A Scary Time was never released by its commissioner, UNICEF. (D.D.)