I’ve realized that all my films are dance films. Every film of mine is dance.
Every one. It’s clear in the way I use the camera, my editing, my sense of rhythm.
I learned so much from being a dancer. I could not have been as good a film-maker had I not danced.
— Shirley Clarke, quoted in Karen Pearlman, Thinking Through Movement (Edinburgh University Press)
On the occasion of the publication of Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement (2025; Edinburgh University Press), Dance Camera West, Los Angeles Filmforum, 7th House Screenings at The Philosophical Research Society, and Clare Schweitzer welcome writer/director Karen Pearlman, who will appear in person to discuss this book and present a screening of films by pioneering filmmaker Shirley Clarke.
Shirley Clarke (1919-1997) was a trained dancer who became a pioneer of independent and experimental film. Clarke’s early work in dance film radically expanded the notion of onscreen choreography, first with explorations of the choreographic potential of camera and editing with filmic reworks of dance performance to highlighting the performative elements of the interaction of bodies, surfaces, space and light in films such as “Bridges Go Round” & “In Paris Parks.” Clarke also challenged the structures of filmmaking away from the camera and co-founded the New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative (with Jonas Mekas) and then the New York Film-Makers’ Distribution Center (with Louis Brigante). In 1975, Shirley Clarke became a professor at UCLA, inspiring a younger generation of film artists to defy convention and make socially meaningful films.
8 Rare Films by Shirley Clarke
Dance in the Sun (6:47, 1953) featuring choreographer/dancer Daniel Nagrin
In Paris Parks, (13:36, 1954 /2014) featuring Wendy Clarke at age 4
A Moment in Love (9:08, 1957), choreographed by Anna Sokolow
A Visual Diary (6:06, 1980), featuring Choreographer-Performer Blondell Cummings
Butterfly (3:40, 1967), an anti-war protest film with Wendy Clark
One-2-3, 24 (8:18, 1978), featuring former Bella Lewitsky dancer Lynda Davis and Clay Taliaferro (Duke Professor Emeritus)
24 Frames Per Second (2:57, 1977) commissioned by the LACMA to complement an exhibit on Persian art
Skyscraper (21:05, 1959), a documentary re-imagined as a musical.
Writer/Director Karen Pearlman’s latest book, Shirley Clarke: Thinking Through Movement is the first film-philosophy book on filmmaker Shirley Clarke and the films she edited and directed. The book draws on film analysis, archival research, dance and film theory, and creative practice expertise, to think through Clarke's work as a dancer turned multi-award-winning editor and director of dance film, fiction, documentary, and video art. This account of Clarke's creative oeuvre offers the reader insight into a too long overlooked filmmaker and offers a novel method for analysis of films, filmmaking practices and cultures of film production.
Presented by Dance Camera West, The Philosophical Research Society, LA Filmforum, and Clare Schweitzer.