It is by calling on jazz that Larry Clark most closely pins down his black characters’ struggle against domination, here that of music producers, white capitalists. The engagement of his saxophonist hero is inseparably linked with a practical dimension (the project of an independent collective recording studio) and the formal dimension (sounds and rhythms of free jazz, its Afro roots). These two layers of consciousness become those of a film, whose scenario plays with the Hollywood industry. Its aesthetics tend to merge with jazz improvisation as the Afro-American cultural legacy. Its synesthetic flights freely associate music, fictional and documentary reminiscences, colourful variations, hypnotising fades to blue or red… In Passing Through, political change is initiated by this recapturing of the senses. Camille Bui
Preservation DCP courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive
