The Connection
Leaving Soon
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1h 42m
Leaving March 1
Directed by Shirley Clarke | 110 mins | 1961
“Shirley Clarke’s The Connection based on and adapted by Jack Gelber is a film way ahead of its time. Arguably the first film to use the “found footage” trope to tell a fictional story. This film blew my mind when I first saw it, the direction and the performances are incredible, I’m hesitant to say too much. We find ourselves in the apartment of Jazz musician and heroin addict Leach as we wait for their dealer to arrive before they can’t start shooting their documentary.”–Devonté Hynes
Reimagining Jack Gelber’s controversial off-Broadway play about a group of addicts—many of them jazz musicians—waiting for a fix, Clarke changed the slumming writer companion of the original to a fly-on-the-wall filmmaker out of the cinema verité scene. The result was a cross-examination of documentary ethics, a demonstration of freewheeling camerawork that erased the material’s stagebound origins while swinging along to the original jazz score, a cause célèbre of New American Cinema—and a target for eager censors across the United States, who assured The Connection would for a long time be more influential than it was screened. Well, it’s still around.
Up Next in Leaving Soon
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Orchard Street
Leaving March 1
Directed by Ken Jacobs | 27 mins | 1955
Ken Jacobs documents the tradition of eager haggling and bargain hunting that once took place on the Lower East Side commercial thoroughfare of the title. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born J... -
Little Stabs at Happiness
Leaving March 1
Directed by Ken Jacobs | 15 m ins | 1963
A collection of smaller silent segments made between 1956 and ’63. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born Jacobs, one of the most wildly creative and influential film artists and teachers in the... -
Blonde Cobra
Leaving March 1
Directed by Ken Jacobs | 34 mins | 1963
In Blonde Cobra, dubbed “the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema” by Jonas Mekas, Jacobs turns his camera on fellow underground icon Jack Smith. Screening as part of a selection of five experimental shorts from the Brooklyn-born Jacobs, one ...
