Shirley Clarke was a dancer and choreographer turned experimental film maker. She was born in New York City on October 2, 1927. She majored in dance while attending colleges in Missouri, Vermont, North Carolina, and Maryland. From 1943 to 1953, she danced professionally with Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, and Anna Sokolow.
Discovering the need for quality dance films, she began to direct and produce them. Her first, Dance in the Sun (1953), won many awards and was shown at numerous national film festivals. This encouraged her to produce two other dance films, Bullfight (1955) and Moment in Love (1957), both of which were acclaimed for their choreographic technique.
Her first full-length film was the documentary Skyscraper (1959), which received an Academy Award nomination, first prize at the Venice Film Festival, and the Golden Mercury Award. She produced two very controversial films, The Connection (1960) and The Cool World (1963). The Connection concerned heroin addiction and was banned for a year by the New York State censors because of the use of a scatological phrase. The Cool World concerned black teenagers in the Harlem ghetto. In 1962, the U.S. government asked her to direct and produce a documentary about the poet Robert Frost; the film Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel (1963) won an Academy Award for best documentary in a feature class. Some of her other films include In Paris Parks (1954), A Scary Time (1960), Man in the Polar Region (1967), the critically acclaimed Portrait of Jason (1967), and Lions Love (1969), in which she also played herself.
Clarke served on the board of directors of the Filmmakers Distribution Center, whose first meeting was held on September 28, 1960. The Center tried to provide distribution services for independent film makers throughout the U.S.
In later years, Clarke began working with video tape. She operated TP, a video theater workshop partially funded by the New York State Council on the Arts, and developed a video troupe that toured on the college circuit.
In 1975, Clarke moved to California and became a member of the faculty of UCLA, where she taught experimental film and television in the Department of Theater Arts. While continuing to develop her use of video, she directed a number of dance and dramatic performance productions including Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikin's Tongues (1982) and Savage/Love (1987), and also directed Sage Allen's play Bigtime Boogie.
Over time, Shirley Clarke's work commanded increasing public attention. This recognition came not only because of her career contributions to avant-garde film, but also because of her status among the small number of women film directors.
Shirley Clarke died on September 23, 1997.
