Larry Clark, born in 1948 in the state of Ohio and applauded for his jazz film Passing Through (1977), is one of the main african-american film directors associated to the movement L.A. Rebellion, also known as ‘Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers’: a generation of filmmakers from the 60s to the 80s of UCLA, creators of a revolutionary Black Cinema diverging from Hollywood conventions and attentive to the real african-american lived experiences.
As a young man, he was president of the Black Student Union in Television. He had musical roots: his grandfather Sonny Clark was a celebrated jazz pianist, his father played sax and taught Latin dances, and his mother was an opera singer. It’s thus understandable that his feature film and final master-project, Passing Through (1977), is considered one of the best films about jazz, as a broad celebration of the artistic skills within the black community - awarded the Special Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival in that same year.
Clark was also the cinematographer in Haile Gerima’s short film Hour Glass (1971) and the director of Tamu (1970), both strongly political and associated with the Black Liberations movement while opposing the myth of the (white) american dream for african-americans. He is also acclaimed for Cutting Horse (2002), a modern day western showing the perseverance of a black horse trainer.
The filmmaker has also received Oscar Micheaux’s Cinematography Prize, and is a cinema teacher at the San Francisco State University.
