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Whether it’s film “recovered” from a crime scene/disaster site or continuous “live video” watched in real time, found footage movies are among the most terrifying titles available to horror lovers. From the collected clips of “V/H/S” to the harrowing ordeal captured in “Unfriended,” these frightening flicks feel at once like pieces of entertainment and physical proof of hell on Earth.

The naturalistic approach to cinema doesn’t belong exclusively to the horror arena, believe it or not. Some film historians posit that the first found footage film was “The Connection”: an experimental joint by Shirley Clarke from 1961 about drug addicts (which is arguably horrific but definitely not a horror movie). And yet, the found footage technique has become so prevalent within the horror genre that it’s almost impossible to extricate the form from the fear it has inspired.

Horror filmmakers are notoriously canny creators,...

15 June 1961: The young American has been in London to promote her debut feature The Connection, which takes a brutally thorough look at its subject

Few film directors are women. Shirley Clarke, a young American, is one of the few. She has been in London for the showing of her controversial film, The Connection, at the National Film Theatre. Among the “shorts” which she had previously made, Skyscrapers had made its mark – the mark of an intelligent, articulate and promising director whose school was not Hollywood.

The Connection is, in fact, her first feature film and, as she showed when I talked with her, she is ruefully, but not apologetically, aware that a brutally thorough feature about drug addicts – for such is The Connection – was an odd one for a young director’s first attempt. The subject itself, she considers, is important enough as a study of the human condition: it was not,...

Los perros, premiering in Critics' Week this year, is the second feature film by Marcela Said.When this year’s Cannes slate was announced, an absence that many immediately noted in the competition slate was that of Claire Denis’ latest project: Un beau soleil intérieur, an adaptation of Roland Barthes's 1977 text A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Leaving aside why her last feature, Bastards, was shunted to the Un Certain Regard section in 2013, the fact that one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers was again denied a competition slot was baffling, to say the least. Except that the film will be at Cannes, premiering alongside new films by Philippe Garrel, Bruno Dumont, and Abel Ferrara no less; it just won’t be in what’s known as the Official Selection. Specifically, Denis will be opening the Director’s Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), a separate, parallel festival completely independent from what...

Editor’s Note: This article is presented in partnership with FilmStruck. Developed and managed by Turner Classic Movies (TCM) in collaboration with the Criterion Collection. FilmStruck features the largest streaming library of contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films as well as extensive bonus content, filmmaker interviews and rare footage. Learn more here. Agnes Varda

At age 88, the indomitable and highly influential Varda shows zero sign of slowing down when it comes to churning out art told through continually experimental means (she’s also remained committed to supporting her work in person, recently popping up at both the French Institute Alliance Française for a career-spanning chat and this year’s Rendezvous With French Cinema series with a brand new exhibit; we should all be so lucky to be as vital and involved when we’re half Varda’s age). Varda’s contributions to cinema and feminism have been...

Milestone wraps up its ‘Project Shirley,’ an in-depth study of the independent director of The Connection and Portrait of Jason. Practically all of Shirley Clarke’s small and experimental films are here from the early 1950s forward, plus a wealth of biographical film.

The Magic Box: The films of Shirley Clarke, 1929-1987

Blu-ray

The Milestone Cinematheque

1929-1987 / B&W + Color

1:37 flat full frame / 502 min.

Street Date November 15, 2016 / 99.99

featuring Shirley Clarke

Produced by Dennis Doros & Amy Heller

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Some disc boutique companies license ready-made movie classics for home video, and some slap whatever odd-sourced items can be had into the Blu-ray format and call it a restoration. Although the general tide for quality releases is rising, only a few companies will invest time and effort in historically- and artistically- important films lacking an obvious commercial hook. Milestone Films has been consistent in its championing of abandoned ‘marginal’ films,...

Drug addicts! Who in 1970 really knew what life was like for them? Jerry Schatzberg, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne's story of hell on the streets of NYC provided a stunning debut for Al Pacino -- and should have done the same for Kitty Winn. It sounds too tough to watch, but it's riveting. The Panic in Needle Park Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 109 min. / Ship Date June 14, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Al Pacino, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint, Richard Bright, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Raul Julia, Joe Santos, Paul Sorvino Cinematography Adam Holender Film Editor Evan Lottman Original Music Ned Rorem Written by Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne from the novel by James Mills. Produced by Dominique Dunne, Roger M. Rothstein Directed by Jerry Schatzberg

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

We all know how the 1970s upheaval in Hollywood brought new talent to film -- actors,...

Milestone Film & Video is one of the finest and most well-established U.S. distributor of docs and arthouse features. They have such great films like the classic "I am Cuba" and have been working on compiling all they can on the filmmaker Shirley Clarke ("The Connection") whose film in the 60s, "The Cool World," made me one of her avid fans forever. Their film, "Portrait of Jason," also by Clarke, premiered at Idfa 2014, the premium doc festival in the world and I was lucky enough to see it at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland. Its clarity and humanity moved me so much that I feel obliged to publish this here. When Amy Heller and Dennis Doros of Milestone speak the way they do in the following blog, I listen. Since the film "Jason and Shirley" just premiered at BAMcinemaFest and Frameline Film Festival, both wonderful events, I think it is important for everyone to know what they have to say. "In 25 years, we have never weighed in on anyone else's film (except to recommend those we love), but Dennis and I felt the need to go on the record about Stephen Winter's new feature Jason and Shirley."

'Jason and Shirley': The Cruelty and Irresponsibility of 'Satire'

by Amy Heller

In the twenty-five years that we have been running Milestone Films, we have never before reviewed or commented publicly on anyone else’s film—except to recommend it. But we have now encountered a new feature film that purports to “satirize” a film and a filmmaker we represent and have spent years researching. While we are absolute believers in freedom of speech and artistic expression and do not dispute that the producers, writers and stars of Jason and Shirley have every right to make their “re-vision” of the making of Shirley Clarke’s great documentary "Portrait of Jason," we feel we must go on the record about the film’s inaccurate and simplistic portrayals of a brilliant filmmaker and her charismatic subject.

Director Stephen Winter (and co-writers Sarah Schulman and Jack Waters) have created a fictitious drama that imagines what might have happened on December 3, 1966 when Shirley Clarke spent twelve hours with Jason Holliday, Carl Lee, Jeri Sopanen, Jim Hubbard and Bob Fiore shooting "Portrait of Jason." The filmmakers claim the right to re-imagine the events that took place in that Hotel Chelsea apartment, but they fail to understand something that Shirley Clarke knew and conveyed in all her films: the need for integrity.

Clarke’s first feature, "The Connection," a fiction film based partly on real people, has enormous respect for all its characters, an understanding of humanity, and a love for cinema. Shirley knew that a genuine artist values inner truth, whether the film is a documentary or a dramatic feature. And of course, Shirley did not use real names. She knew that when you use real people’s names and identities, you need to seek and explore the truth in all its complexities. Ornette: Made in America, a film that she and Ornette Coleman were very proud to create, is an example of Clarke’s quest for meaning and authenticity.

We at Milestone are now in the seventh year of “Project Shirley,” our ongoing commitment to learn everything about Clarke as a director, an artist and a person. With the cooperation of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater and the Clarke estate, we have digitized nearly one hundred of her features, short films, outtakes, unfinished projects, home movies, and experimental films and videos. We have gone through thousands of pages of letters, contracts, and Shirley’s diaries. We have interviewed and talked to dozens of people who knew and worked with her.

We have heard wonderful stories, tragic stories, and stories of such real pain that they are almost unbearable. Shirley Clarke was a sister, wife, mother, dancer, lover, filmmaker, editor, teacher, and yes, for a sad period, a junkie. It wasn’t intended, but along the way we fell in love with Shirley and came to feel that we owed it to her to create a portrait of a real woman and an artist. Shirley’s daughter Wendy Clarke and her extended family have supported our efforts every step of the way, encouraging us to reveal what is true, for better or worse. We have shared our discoveries with the world in theaters, on television, on DVD and Blu-Ray, in lectures — and in our exhaustive press kits (available on our website, free for everyone).

We have strived for the highest levels of accuracy, knowing that critics, academics, bloggers, and the general public deserve and depend on our research. We corroborated all the oral histories we conducted using primary sources, including original letters, interviews, and contracts. Finally, we asked people who knew Shirley to check and proof all our work. We have shared this research with every filmmaker, scholar and critic who has asked us for information.

So it was truly agonizing for us to watch Stephen Winter’s "Jason and Shirley," a film that is bad cinema and worse ethics—that cynically appropriates and parodies the identities of real people, stereotyping and humiliating them and doing disservice to their memory. The filmmakers may call it an homage, but their complete lack of research and their numerous factual errors and falsehoods have betrayed everyone who was involved in making "Portrait of Jason."

Winter and his team call their film an “imagination” of the night (although they stage the filming during the day) of December 3, when Shirley Clarke shot "Portrait of Jason." But interestingly, they only use the real names of those participants who have died: Clarke, Jason Holliday and Carl Lee (perhaps because you cannot libel the dead). They did not interview the people who were on the set that long night and who are still around—filmmakers Bob Fiore and Jim Hubbard.

They also chose not to work with Shirley’s daughter, artist and filmmaker Wendy Clarke, whom they never bothered to contact (and go out of their way to mock in the film). Jason and Shirley even features a title card in the closing credits thanking Wendy, implying that she has given her approval for the film. In truth, Wendy’s response, when she finally saw Jason and Shirley, was: “I don’t want people seeing this film to think there is any truth to it. This film tells nasty lies and is a parasitic attempt to gain prominence from true genius.”

Similarly, the filmmakers never asked us at Milestone for access to the reams of documents we have discovered from the making of "Portrait of Jason." Instead, they preferred to pretend to know what happened, to create their own “Shirley Clarke,” “Carl Lee,” and “Jason Holliday,” rather than try to create honest and respectful portraits of these very real people.

Lazy filmmakers make bad movies and "Jason and Shirley" is false, flaccid, and boring—unforgivable cinematic sins. Perhaps its most egregious and painful crime is taking the strong, brilliant woman that Shirley Clarke truly was and portraying her as a lumpy, platitude-spouting Jewish hausfrau—an inept cineaste who doesn’t know what she is doing and eventually needs her boyfriend to “save” the film for her. In service of their alleged investigation into race relations (a topic Shirley explored far better with her powerful and intelligent films "The Connection," "The Cool World," "Portrait of Jason" and "Ornette: Made in America"), they reduced her to a sexist cliché—the little woman—and a tedious cliché at that.

Shirley Clarke was wild, creative, brilliant, graceful, challenging, incredibly stylish, vibrant, and alive with the possibilities of life. At home at the center of many creative circles in New York City and around the world, she was adored by countless admirers—despite (or sometimes because of) her faults and failings. And Shirley is still loved by those who remember her—the people who worked on her films, her friends, her family, and the audiences who are rediscovering her great films. She was incredibly special. The misshapen caricature of Clarke in Jason and Shirley insults and trivializes a great artist and pioneer.

We also find “Jason” in Winter’s film to be a one-dimensional and disrespectful distortion of the very complicated man who was born Aaron Payne in 1924. Jason Holliday’s life was difficult in many ways—as a gay black man he experienced police harassment, poverty, family rejection, imprisonment, painful self-doubt, and innumerable varieties of personal and institutional racism. But he was also vibrantly an original, a self-invented diva, a survivor, and a raconteur of the first order who was the inspiration for his own cinematic Portrait. Shirley decided to make her film in order to explore this extraordinary Scheherazade’s 1001 stories—and the fragile line between his reminiscences and his inventions.

And truly, it is not easy to tell what was real and what was not in Jason’s life. In his “Autobiography” (reprinted in Milestone’s press kit), Holliday talked about appearing on Broadway in “Carmen Jones,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Green Pastures” and about performing his nightclub act in Greenwich Village. And while much of his narrative may seem improbable, the Trenton Historical Society found newspaper articles from the 1950s corroborating Jason’s claim that he was a performer at New York’s Salle de Champagne. So did he study acting with Charles Laughton and dance with Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham? We may never know. But the man who spun those marvelous yarns was not the alternately maniacal and weepy loser in "Jason and Shirley."

Here are just a few of the other things that are obviously, carelessly and offensively wrong in "Jason and Shirley":

In the very beginning, there is a title card stating that the filmmakers were denied access to the outtakes of "Portrait of Jason." These recordings were available for all to hear at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, where all of Shirley’s archives can be found—or by contacting Milestone. In fact, all the outtakes (30 minutes of audio) were released on November 11, 2014 as a bonus features on Milestone’s DVD and Blu-Ray of the film. That was six months before "Jason and Shirley" was completed.

In "Jason and Shirley," “Jason” has never previously visited “Shirley’s” apartment and knows nothing about her. In reality, they had been friends for many years and Jason would often visit her apartment. The film states that the cinematographer on Portrait of Jason had worked on Clarke’s other two features. Actually, the film was Jeri Sopanen’s first job with her. Further, absolutely no crew member had an issue about working on "Portrait of Jason," as the new film portrays.

In the film “Shirley” says, “See that horrible painting on the wall? My daughter painted that… I have a daughter who is a terrible artist.” Fact: in several video interviews with Shirley (including one released as a bonus feature on Ornette: Made In America, which also came out last November) and in many of her letters and diaries, Clarke talked about how extremely proud she was of her daughter Wendy and her art. Mother and daughter worked happily together for years on many projects including the legendary Tee Pee Video Space Troupe. Wendy’s fine art, textiles, and video work have received critical praise for nearly 50 years. It was needlessly and maliciously hurtful for the filmmakers to include a line that is so obviously false and unkind.

In the film, “Shirley” says her maiden name was Bermberg. She was born Shirley Brimberg.

There is an Academy Award® statue for "Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel With the World" in “Shirley’s” apartment and the other characters repeatedly mock her for it. The film did win an Oscar®, but although she received directing credit, Shirley had been fired from the final edit and producer Robert Hughes picked up the award. (You can see this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOS70Tqsz7U)

“Shirley” asks “Jason” to go up on the roof of the Hotel Chelsea with her to talk. In reality, her apartment was famously on the roof.

In the film, “Shirley” is unable to finish Portrait of Jason and tells everybody to go home and “Carl Lee” comes in to take over the film and save it. This is ludicrous, wrong and misogynistic. Clarke was a consummate film professional and all her collaborators attest to her skill and drive.

The film ends with a title card stating that Shirley died in New York (which is simply incorrect) and that Carl Lee died of a heroin overdose. Tragically, Lee died of AIDS and this information is in the Milestone press kit.

Another title card indicates that when Jason Holliday died that there were no friends or family listed in his one obituary. In truth, the Trentonian on July 31, 1998 wrote that two sisters, six nieces and two nephews survived him. We found the relatives when doing our research.

The filmmakers have labeled "Jason and Shirley" a satirical work of fiction. We are just not sure who or what they claim to be satirizing. The film is not ironic, humorous, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. We can only surmise that they are deliberately parodying the idea of cinematic integrity.

On behalf of Milestone, Wendy Clarke, and Shirley Clarke’s extended family and friends, we respectfully ask film fans not to base their appraisal of Clarke and her filmmaking on the unkind depictions in "Jason and Shirley."

Yours in cinema,

Amy Heller and Dennis Doros

Milestone Films...

New York has often been the setting for films about heroin addicts, with titles ranging from Shirley Clarke's cinéma-vérité-tweaking The Connection (1961) to Slava Tsukerman's new-wave cult classic Liquid Sky (1982) mining the drama of smack freaks tying off, shooting up, and nodding out. But Josh and Benny Safdie's tough, lean Heaven Knows What has a searing intensity those antecedents lack: It centers on electrifying newcomer Arielle Holmes as a homeless junkie named Harley, a character largely shaped by the performer's own extremely recent past.

The Safdie brothers' film, in fact, takes off from Holmes's as-yet-unpublished book Mad Love in New York City, a chronicle of her teenage vagrancy and obsessive, self-destructi...

The Hollywood Reporter calls Josh Karp's Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind "an early contender for this year's best book about Hollywood"—and Vanity Fair's running a generous excerpt. Meantime, Jonathan Rosenbaum's posted his 2006 review of Simon Callow's biography of Welles. Also in today's roundup: Seven philosophers each pick a film to address an essential question. Zach Lewis on Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage. A talk with Pedro Costa. Clayton Dillard on Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels. Steven Boone on Shirley Clarke's The Connection. Yusef Sayed on Sidney Lumet's The Offence. Kim Morgan on Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. And more. » - David Hudson...

The Hollywood Reporter calls Josh Karp's Orson Welles's Last Movie: The Making of The Other Side of the Wind "an early contender for this year's best book about Hollywood"—and Vanity Fair's running a generous excerpt. Meantime, Jonathan Rosenbaum's posted his 2006 review of Simon Callow's biography of Welles. Also in today's roundup: Seven philosophers each pick a film to address an essential question. Zach Lewis on Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage. A talk with Pedro Costa. Clayton Dillard on Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels. Steven Boone on Shirley Clarke's The Connection. Yusef Sayed on Sidney Lumet's The Offence. Kim Morgan on Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. And more. » - David Hudson...

Shirley Clarke grew up wealthy, the daughter of a manufacturing magnate and a family fortune. She had an extensive education between four universities, and married to escape her father’s tyrannical control of her adult life. At first Clarke pursued modern dance in New York City but, failing to secure a future for herself in one art form, she began making experimental, avant-garde and documentary films in her mid-thirties. Over the next several decades, Clarke produced fiction films that looked like documentaries, documentaries that flirted with the boundaries of fiction, some of the first video art projects, and movies that possess an incredible energy to them that few filmmakers have mastered, then or now. She studied under Hans Richter, inspired other New York filmmakers like John Cassavetes, helped co-found the Filmmakers’ Co-Op with Jonas Mekas, yet the important role that she played in the New American Cinema scene has risked becoming stuck between the pages of cinema...

The Austin Film Society is wrapping up their "Films Of Johnnie To" series with his 2005 crime drama Election. It screens in 35mm tonight and Sunday afternoon at the Marchesa. They'll also be hosting former Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson at the Afs Screening Room on Monday night for a rare VHS presentation of Blonde Death, a film directed by "the world's angriest gay man." 

The Summer Classic Film Series at the Paramount has just about come to a close for another year. On Tuesday and Wednesday evening you can see two of my favorite Woody Allen films, The Purple Rose Of Cairo and Radio Days, presented in 35mm. On Thursday night, Gone With The Wind is the last official film of the series (although TCM's Robert Osbourne will be stopping by next Friday for a presentation and Q&A about the film as the last event of the summer). Hopefully...

By 1966, underground New York City filmmaker Shirley Clarke had already directed two of her seminal works: the trailblazing mockumentary "The Connection," about a bunch of junkies in a Greenwich Village loft, and the Harlem ghetto portrait "The Cool World." Clarke could have stopped there and provided an ample overview of various social tensions at the center of bohemian counterculture and African American society in the throes of Civil Rights. But then came "Portrait of Jason," which boiled down many of the earlier films conceits on race and class into a single memorable subject. Jason Holliday (birth name: Aaron Payne), a black, gay hustler with a lifetime of stories to share, spent a booze-filled evening in Clarke's apartment rambling about his wild experiences and sharing his darkest feelings. In one take after another, Holliday bares his soul, boasts of his profession, bursts into tears over his regrets and inexplicably giggles at his own private jokes.

This Week’s Must Read: Filmmaker Jesse Malmed has a wonderful in-depth article with fellow filmmaker Julie Perrini up at the art blog Bad At Sports. Yes, you’ll want to read all about Perrini’s work processes and her evolution as a filmmaker, but you’ll really be fascinated to hear why she had to — as the interview’s title says — explain what state smashers are to a grand jury.The Broward Palm Beach New Times ran a good interview with John Waters, not so much about his movies but about his general interests. Best part of the article: He says he loved J.J. Murphy’s recent book on the films of Andy Warhol, The Black Hole of the Camera. Just like us! Seriously, if you haven’t read that book yet, you’re really missing out on something wonderful.Name that Fleshapoid! (Ok, I know technically that’s not a Fleshapoid,...

This Week’s Must Read — if you can get through the New York Times paywall — is Manhola Dargis saying that Shirley Clarke is “one of the great undertold stories of American independent cinema.” Ain’t that the truth! Dargis tries to give Clarke as much due as she can in just one article on the occasion of the restoration of The Connection and it’s release in NYC this weekend.Glenn Kenny also urges folks to go see The Connection in no uncertain terms.Man, NYC really is the place to be this weekend as donna k. teases Brent Green’s latest installation, To Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, which is on view at the Edlin Gallery this week.Just a reminder: There’s only a few days left to contribute to the Chicago Underground Film Festival’s Kickstarter campaign. Help support the longest-running underground fest of all time!

by Vadim Rizov

[Presented by Milestone Films, The Connection opens today at NYC's IFC Center in a new 35mm restoration.]

Though credulous French viewers allegedly mistook it for vérité footage at Cannes, Shirley Clarke's 1962 drama The Connection is unmistakably a filmed play. A camera swoop through a ratty New York apartment halts for a sweaty, self-and-everyone-loathing monologue from waspy addict Leach (Warren Finnerty), fuming about his "so-called friends" and their junkie worthlessness. Far from naturalism, this is Eugene O'Neill territory, with a drug connection subbing for the long-awaited iceman in a purgatorial living room. Leach finds his place under a big sign posted above the bathroom for maximum dark comic value ("Heaven or hell...which will you choose?"), holding forth with barroom intensity and pointlessness about the speed of light and the body's transparency.

Clarke meticulously records Finnerty's theatrical version of verisimilitude. More of-the-time hamminess comes from Solly (Jerome Raphael), a middle-aged intellectual with a penchant for philosophizing at the slightest provocation. Leach's problem is his...

(The purpose of Milestone Films’ ‘Project Shirley’ is to re-introduce the best available prints of Shirley Clarke’s work to audiences across the world. The Connection opens in NYC at the IFC Center on Friday, May 4, 2012. Visit the Milestone website to learn more.)

Usually when you watch a once-banned film decades after the fact, it leads to a deflated feeling that the film wasn’t ban-worthy at all, that it wasn’t ever close to being “dangerous.” But when one of those films is also widely deemed a classic by trusted sources? Well, that just about guarantees it’s going to land with a big, whopping letdown of a thud. So here comes a restoration of Shirley Clarke’s 1962 feature, The Connection, a film that 1) was banned upon its initial release, and 2) is considered to be a landmark achievement in American independent cinema. With a double-expectation like that, there’s no way it can deliver,...

Editor’s note: Critical Consensus is a biweekly feature in which two critics from Indiewire’s Criticwire network discuss new releases with Indiewire’s chief film critic, Eric Kohn. Here, The Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday and National Society of Film Critics chair David Sterritt take on Shirley Clarke's 1962 cult hit about a documentary filmmaker attempting to document a group of junkies in the West Village. Newly restored by UCLA and opening at New York's IFC Center this Friday, "The Connection" marks the first of several restored Clarke films set for theatrical and DVD releases this year. David, one of the interesting things about "The Connection" is that there are multiple angles for discussing it. It's a commentary on cinéma vérité, but also a portrait of the Beat Generation, as you point out in your book about the period. What do you think is the most essential aspect of the movie's lasting.

The New York Times runs two must-reads this weekend. With Jacques Rivette's Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974) opening at Film Forum on Friday, Dennis Lim writes, "It's not just that the film holds up to repeat viewings; its very point is its seemingly infinite repeatability, its mysterious capacity to surprise both first-time viewers and those who know it as well as a magician reciting an incantation." He goes on to consider Céline within the context of Rivette's oeuvre and its lasting impact on filmmakers as diverse as Susan Seidelman and David Lynch.

"Shirley Clarke is one of the great undertold stories of American independent cinema," writes Manohla Dargis at the top of piece on Milestone Films' multi-year project to restore and revive interest in Clarke's work. The Connection (1962) opens Friday at the IFC Center and soon to follow will be theatrical and DVD releases of Robert Frost: A...

You have to be 18 or older to see You Killed Me First, which, according to the Kw Institute of Contemporary Art, is the first exhibition on the Cinema of Transgression. There'll be a talk with Nick Zedd on Tuesday evening, followed by another with Richard Kern on Wednesday. The exhibition's opened this weekend and will be on view through April 9.

Also in Berlin, and starting tomorrow, the Arsenal will be screening a selection of titles from the Forum program at this year's just-wrapped Berlinale. Eleven films over eleven evenings, beginning with the three films by Yuzo Kawashima, The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957), Suzaki Paradise: Red Light (1956) and Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1954), and ending with the two restorations of films by Shirley Clarke, Ornette: Made in America (1984) and The Connection (1961).

Next week, the Arsenal wraps its series of films by Ulrike Ottinger by screening her Berlin Trilogy...

Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

The Berlinale rounds out its Forum program today with the announcement of a series of Special Screenings, a couple of world premieres and a batch of revivals. Combine this list with the titles announced last week and those in Forum Expanded and you're looking at the complete program.

World Premieres:

in arbeit / en construction / w toku / lavori in corso (in the works) by Minze Tummescheit/Arne Hector, Germany. The festival notes that this documentary project is "structured according to the principle of the chain interview, with the first interview partner leading the film team on to the second and so on. What all of their number have in common are the cooperative structures in which they work. Yet the most important question they debate is that of their own legitimacy: does it make sense or is it even possible to position oneself outside of industrial progress,...

Today is underground filmmaker Shirley Clarke‘s birthday. She was born on Oct. 2, 1919 and passed away on Sept. 23, 1997.

She is mostly well-known for her two jazz-themed narrative feature films The Connection (1960) and The Cool World (1963); as well as the 1967 documentary, Portrait of Jason. However, she also directed numerous short films, such as Bullfight (1955) and Bridges-Go-Round (1958-59).

In the ’70s and early ’80s, she taught filmmaking at UCLA and continued to make short films, but returned to feature filmmaking with the 1985 documentary Ornette: Made in America.

In the below video, Edinburgh International Film Festival programmer Niall Greig Fulton reviews the retrospective the fest held of Clarke’s work in 2008. The video also includes clips from her films:...

Maverick director best known for his film of Ulysses – widely seen as a noble failure

There must be something quixotic about a director who sets out to make a film of James Joyce's Ulysses. A passionate Joycean, Joseph Strick, who has died aged 86, was undeterred by the challenge and the obstacles: "Even before I made it, people were saying it was unfilmable. I think the truth is, some people just find the book unreadable."

The iconoclastic Strick first envisaged an 18-hour version, faithful to every word, but unsurprisingly he could not get anyone to finance it. When the final two-hour version, shot in Dublin, was completed in 1967, it fell foul of censorship – just like the novel. The British Board of Film Censors requested 29 cuts to remove sexual references from Molly Bloom's final, expletive-laden soliloquy. Strick obliged by replacing all of the offending footage with a blank screen and a high-pitched shrieking sound.

The artistic directors of both Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine de realisateurs) and Critics' Week (La Semaine de la critique) have stated they did not want to pick from Sundance titles. "We try to show films that don't pass through Sundance first", Critics Week’s Artistic Director Jean-Christophe Berjon said, “although U.S. indie entries are well represented this year." "I wanted to change things up and not take any Sundance films unless they were exceptional," said Frederic Boyer said in an interview. Considering how many Sundance titles went to the Berlinale, and that Cannes is 6 months later, singling out Sundance is somewhat odd. We in Us already know that Sundance has a certain sort of American film, and that other films are continually being made that might be just as good but not to the taste of Sundance programmers or simply not timed for the Sundance slot. That the two Cannes...