Overview
Contains material related to the filmmaker and dancer Shirley Clarke.
Dates
- Creation: 1975-1985
Conditions Governing Access
Collection is open for research.
The Harvard Film Archive's manuscript collections and paper-based materials are accessed through the Houghton Library Reading Room. This material is shelved offsite at the Harvard Depository. Retrieval requires advance notice. Researchers should check with Houghton Public Services staff to determine retrieval policies and times.
Extent
.5 linear feet (1 box)Collection primarily includes small amount of material documenting Shirley Clarke's work in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This includes press articles related to her experimentation with the video medium, as well as notes and promotional material related to short films such as the Four Journeys Into Mystic Time (1978) cycle and Savage/Love (1981). Also included are several pieces of promotional material related to her daughter Wendy Clarke's Love Tapes.
Biographical / Historical
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.
Arrangement
Collection has been minimally arranged by topic.
Physical Location
Harvard Depository
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Purchased by the Harvard Theatre Collection for the Harvard Film Archive from House of Mirth Photos, 2022 May 16.
Processing Information
Processed by Max Goldberg, 2023.
- Title
- Collection of Shirley Clarke materials (hfa00046): Guide
- Status
- completed
- Author
- Harvard Film Archive, Harvard University
- Date
- October 2023
- Description rules
- dacs
- Language of description
- eng
- EAD ID
- hfa00046
Repository Details
Part of the Harvard Film Archive, Harvard Library, Harvard University Repository
The Harvard Film Archive is one of the largest university-based motion picture collections in the United States, with a collection of 40,000 audio visual items, a growing number of manuscript collections, and nearly one million still photographs, posters, and other promotional materials from around the world and from almost every period in film history. The HFA's collection of paper materials, including the documentation of individual filmmakers as well as promotional materials such as posters, film stills, and ephemera are accessible to Harvard affiliates as well as to outside researchers.
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hfa@fas.harvard.edu