Shirley Clarke

Lions Love

Three actors in Hollywood live and love together. A director comes from New York to make a movie about actors and Hollywood.

Sex Stars

Sex star gives an explosive behind the scenes view of the people who make sexual fantasies come true on the silver screen. Sex Stars is the first feature documentary made by Lech Kowalski.

As Kineastas

Based on interviews with 15 women, including directors, producers and film actresses, a journey around the world is made, seeing the wars waged by each one against economic and political repression, bombs, police dogs, censors, etc. Images from England, New York, Brazil, South Africa.

Alien Blood

Spoof science fiction. An alien mother and her child are pursued across England by a bunch of incompetent government agents and take refuge in a house full of vampires. Homage back to the camp tone of British directors of the 1970's such as Ken Russell, (The Lair Of The White Worm), Robert Fuest, (Dr Phibes Rises Again), and Joe McGrath, (The Magic Christian). Distributed by Troma in the U.S., it contains violence, nudity and exploding bagpipes.

Galaxie

In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

Portrait of Jason

Interview with Jason Holliday aka Aaron Payne. House-boy, would-be cabaret performer, and self-proclaimed hustler giving one man's gin-soaked, pill-popped view of what it was like to be black and gay in 1960s United States. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Milestone Films in 2013.

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.

Birth of a Nation

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

Underground New York

A rare behind-the-scenes view of the exploding New York “underground” in the late sixities, a turbulent time and place that was to change American culture forever. A German TV crew, led by journalist Gideon Bachmann, explores the epicenter of the sixties revolution in art, music, poetry and film and interviews the main players in the “New American Cinema,” that was born on the streets of New York. Against a backdrop of cultural upheaval in all of the arts and growing political agitation against the Vietnam War, Bachman interviews the most prominent figures in “underground film,” including Jonas Mekas, Shirley Clarke, the Kuchar Brothers and Bruce Connor, and visits the most notorious location in the New York art world of the era - Andy Warhol’s Factory - to conduct an interview with the genius of Pop Art himself.

Happy Birthday to John

On October 9, 1972, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse hosted an exhibition of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s work, designed by Fluxus artist George Maciunas. That same day, friends including Ringo Starr, Allen Ginsberg, and Paul Krassner gathered to celebrate Lennon’s birthday. Jonas Mekas’s film records the event in both image and sound, capturing the spirit of the moment and the community around Lennon and Ono.

Bill's Hat

"The whole film are non-art portraits of people in which they do what they want with this hat – and therefore, act or stand in front of my camera. It’s only love: therefore it can’t harm you". Joyce Wieland.

Shirley Clarke: The Artist with the Lens

A short, Filmstruck-produced documentary on the life of director Shirley Clarke.

Rome Is Burning: Portrait of Shirley Clarke

Documentary about filmmaker Shirley Clarke which originally aired on the French television series “Cinéastes de notre temps”.

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

The Modnar Machine

UCLA Student Film, Preserved by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Interviewees sit in the Modnar Machine and reflect on contemporary life, from war, to television, identity, self-perception, with abstractions in sound and visuals creating a feedback loop.