Clarke, Shirley, 1919-1997

Born in New York, Shirley Clarke first made waves as a dancer studying with modern choreographers like Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, and Doris Humphrey. In early short films, such as A Dance in the Sun (1953), Bullfight (1955), and Bridges Go Round (1958), she successfully fused her interests in choreography and cinema. Subsequent feature films The Connection (1961), The Cool World (1964), and Portrait of Jason (1967) were landmarks of independent cinema, charting an uncompromising path through controversial subject matter. Her portrait of the poet Robert Frost, Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (1963) won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Her final feature, Ornette: Made in America (1985), is another portrait, this time of the jazz musician Ornette Coleman.

Clarke was also a social organizer, co-founding the Film-Makers Cooperative and Film-Makers Distribution Center with Jonas Mekas in New York, and later the Tee Pee Videospace Troupe. She was the recipient of many awards and retrospectives, and from 1975 to 1985 taught film and video production at the University of California, Los Angeles. She died in Boston in 1997.