Of the Abstract, and the Real

In association with Filmforum and KAOS, the UCLA Film Archive will present “A Tribute to Shirley Clarke,” which focuses long-overdue attention to a major force in American independent film. The tribute will commence tonight at 7:30 in the James Bridges Theater in UCLA’s Melnitz Hall with a screening of “The Connection” (1961), which will be followed by a memorial to Clarke, who died last year after a long illness.

A dancer and choreographer, Clarke started making dance films in the early ‘50s. She soon co-founded the Filmmakers Coop with filmmaker-critic Jonas Mekas, which provided a crucial New York showcase for fellow independent filmmakers. It is hard to overestimate her impact on independent cinema, both by her example and her efforts to help others, including teaching at UCLA and elsewhere.

As an artist, Clarke was much concerned with racism in America, and in her experimental mode she deliberately blurred the line between the documentary and fiction films. Clarke’s refusal to compromise and her independent stance made working in film increasingly difficult, and she spent her last active years working in video. Clarke’s lamentable lack of opportunities makes her accomplishments seem all the more formidable and enduring. Her work ranges from the abstract to the rawest of raw realism, yet it is all of a piece in its vibrant lyricism.

To have seen the Living Theater’s 1959 production of Jack Gelber’s “The Connection” was an unforgettable experience, thrusting you in the same seedy room with a group of junkies waiting for their fix to arrive. Yet Clarke did not merely record this groundbreaking play with its superb performances but managed to turn it into a real movie while preserving its inherent theatricality.

She did this by inventing the character of a relentlessly, sometimes hilariously square documentary filmmaker (William Redfield), who through his black cameraman (Roscoe Lee Browne) has invaded the dreary pad of Leach (Warren Finnerty), where the host and others are waiting for the arrival of Cowboy (Carl Lee), their heroin supplier. Cowboy speaks in an insinuating drawl and possesses a bleak wisdom.

In effect, we see “The Connection” via Browne’s hand-held camera (which occasionally passes into the hands of others), and the film’s jagged rhythms, punctuated by the musicians’ jam sessions, gives a quality of naturalism to the actors’ long monologues of alternately passionate and scabrous despair. “The Connection” is steeped in New York ‘50s cool, but seen today it seems as timeless as Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh.” “The Connection” will screen on video Friday at KAOS, 4343 Leimert Blvd.

The premise for the 1967 “Portrait of Jason” (Friday at 7:30 p.m. at the Bridges Theater) couldn’t be more simple, yet the results could scarcely be more remarkable. Clarke took her camera, placed in front of it a man she had known for several years and shot away for the next 12 hours. Born Aaron Paine in Trenton, N.J., on June 8, 1934, the man who calls himself Jason Holliday is a hard-drinking black gay male hustler. By the time Clarke has finished with Jason, she had succeeded in getting him to strip bare his soul.

“I am scared of responsibility and I am scared of myself because I’m a pretty frightening cat,” begins Jason, who proceeds to supply plenty of evidence. With not inconsiderable wit, charm and intelligence, he speaks philosophically of his chaotic life--”If I’d been a ranch, they’d have called me Bar-None”--and his dream of putting together a nightclub act.

But as the night wears on and the more drunk he becomes, his escapades take on a more harrowing quality; his incessant self-mocking laughter borders closer and closer to hysteria.

Finally, he tells of a brutal father and overprotective mother, and his anecdotes about race relations become more painful than amusing. In the end he emerges as a desperate outsider, struggling to make something of his life yet knowing that he won’t.

Playing with “Portrait of Jason” is Andre S. Labarthe and Noel Burch’s 55-minute “Rome Is Burning: A Portrait of Shirley Clarke,” which captures Clarke’s forthright personality and first-rate intellect. In the film she’s interviewed by Birch and others in connection with the screening of “Portrait of Jason” at the Cinematheque Francaise in January 1968. The gamin Clarke is impressively concise on her filmmaking methods and philosophy and their relationship to her view of the world.

A vivid portrait of the despair and futility of ghetto existence, “The Cool World” (Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Bridges Theater) is a highly uneven but sometimes powerful work with generally poor performances from an almost entirely amateur cast, excellent photography--cinematographer Baird Bryant will appear with the film--and a good jazz score played by Dizzy Gillespie and Yusef Lateef.

Tragedy brought about by an environment rather than character is always hard to pull off, and this time Clarke has not been able to combine art and sociology successfully. Instead of giving impact to the story of 14-year-old Duke Custin’s search for a gun he thinks will make him a man, the raw realism of the lengthy footage of Harlem streets only serves to underline the contrived quality of the plot and to show up the inexperience of the young actors.

As a further hindrance, Clarke has an often heavy hand with irony. For example, she spoils the film’s best sequence when Duke takes his girl to Coney Island to prove to her that there really is an ocean at the end of the subway, by tilting the camera away from the kids to a sign on a lifeguard station reading “Lost Children.”

“The Cool World” will be followed by one of Clarke’s last and most impressive works, “Ornette Coleman: Made in America” (1985). The film is framed by Coleman’s return to his hometown of Fort Worth in September 1983 for the premiere of his “Skies in America,” to be performed at the city’s performing arts center with his band along with a symphony orchestra. As we hear Coleman’s complex “free jazz” music soar, Clarke weaves in impressions of his childhood in the segregated city and his subsequent distinguished career.

Clarke’s ability to echo Coleman’s music with an equally free flow of images makes this film an extraordinarily rich experience, smoothing out the usual back-and-forth cuts between interviewees and the subject’s life and work. Throughout the series the features will be accompanied by Clarke’s short films and video works. Among them are two lyrical celebrations to those Manhattan glories, bridges and skyscrapers. “Bridges Go-Round” (1958) will precede “The Connection” twice--with two different scores. “Skyscraper” (1959), made with Willard Van Dyke and Irving Jacobye, traces the 18-month construction of 666 Fifth Avenue with construction workers’ comments serving as soundtrack narration and incorporating songs, as in a musical. It will screen after “The Cool World.” Clarke’s daughter Wendy and performance artist Johanna Went will appear at the Tuesday 7:30 p.m. program at KAOS composed of Clarke’s shorts, including her later video work. UCLA Film Archive: (310) 206-FILM; Filmforum: (213) 526-2911; and KAOS: (213) 296-5717.

Note: The Nuart is presenting in conjunction with “Wild Man Blues,” Barbara Kopple’s documentary on Woody Allen’s band, “Woody’s Monochrome Quartet,” and four vintage Allen films screening Saturdays and Sundays at noon through April 26. They are “Zelig” (April 18), “Stardust Memories” (April 19), “Broadway Danny Rose” (April 25) and “Manhattan” (1979). (310) 478-6379