Shirley Clarke was, since the early fifties, a central figure in the American independent and avant-garde film movement. She studied modern dance, and her work is characterized by rhythmic editing and subjective point of view that can be seen to validate her claim that "even a film in the style of cinéma verité becomes choreographic because dance, as I conceive it, is the very nature of a human being." The Cool World, shot in Harlem, is the story of a black adolescent, Duke, who longs to lead his gang, the Royal Pythons. The pursuit of a gun takes him on a downward trajectory from stealing, selling drugs, and gang fighting to arrest. Described on its release as "a loud, long, and powerful cry of outrage at the world society has created for Harlem youngsters and at the human condition in a slum ghetto," The Cool World remains a powerful, poetic study of black youth. In it, Clarke continues her interrogation of the documentary and narrative forms: although based on a literary source, much of the film was improvised, the cast selected from students at Harlem junior high schools.-Kathy Geritz