Directed by Shirley Clarke

Experimental icon Shirley Clarke synthesized jazz, modern dance, and abstract expressionism into a dynamic vérité style that put her at the forefront of the emergent American independent film scene of the fifties and sixties. Beginning her artistic career as a dancer, she brought a choreographer’s feeling for rhythm and movement to early dance films like DANCE IN THE SUN and BULLFIGHT and to kinetic city symphonies like BRIDGES-GO-ROUND and the Academy Award–nominated documentary SKYSCRAPER. Though she directed only a handful of features—including the controversial beatnik bombshell THE CONNECTION and the nonfiction queer-cinema classic PORTRAIT OF JASON—they stand as taboo-busting landmarks of the American underground that pointed the way toward a radical counter-cinema.