Ornette: Made in America
Essential Documentaries
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1h 17m
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 85 mins | 1985
“Discovering the work of filmmaker and the Film-Makers' Cooperative co-founder, Shirley Clarke made me aware of the wide range of cinema’s possibilities. This 1985 documentary shot in collaboration with the late Ornette Coleman, using a diverse array of video manipulations, is an impressive portrait of the musician and has strongly influenced the making of A Different Score. Active member and advocate of New York’s independent film community, Clarke later turned her attention to social-issue filmmaking. She has always been a wild card and her work deserves to be more known.” –Anaïs Ngbanzo
Up Next in Essential Documentaries
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Our Beloved Month of August
Directed by Miguel Gomes | 147 mins | 2008
Gomes’s magical mystery tour through the rich pageant of summertime Portugal blurs fiction and documentary as it chronicles a traveling family pop band, interviews with an array of folks in the country, and a fragile fictional love story. Gomes’s second ... -
Our Nixon
Directed by Penny Lane | 85 mins | 2013
Using an array of archival materials including television interviews, Nixon’s secretly recorded White House tapes, and more than 500 reels of long-out-of-circulation Super 8 home movies by presidential aides Dwight Chapin, John Ehrlichman, and H.R. Haldeman... -
Portrait of Jason
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 107 mins | 1967
A distillation of a single 12-hour interview in a room at the Chelsea Hotel with the charismatic Jason Holliday (“real” name Aaron Payne), a gay, African American cabaret dancer, part-time hustler, and full-time raconteur, Portrait of Jason grows from ...
