Passing Through (1977) review

Fresh out of prison for a murder charge, professional saxophone player Eddie Warmack (Nathaniel Taylor) is desperate to find his grandfather, Poppa Harris (Clarence Muse) - who first taught him how to play - and restart his career as a musician (without having anything to do with the corrupt music industry); he also has a brief romance with a young lady named Maya (Pamela Jones).  Clark (not to be confused with the photographer from Tulsa) made this when he was studying at UCLA and it's clearly inspired by free jazz, except it seems to be stuck in some cinematic limbo where part of it wants to be an experimental film and part of it is trying for a 'traditional narrative,' and this 'split' makes for a choppy and sometimes tedious viewing experience.  Its reputation has grown over time due to the filmmaker allegedly refusing for it to be released on home video (and only watchable during select screenings) so in the minds of a few it's this "rare treasure," although now you can easily locate a copy on the Internet ... and while it has a couple of nice "poetic" moments and interesting shots (Charles Burnett was a camera operator and Julie Dash worked on the sound), it amounts to little more than a curio from the era. Sorry, gatekeepers.