Passing Through

CTL-E-6171 · Work · film · 1977; National Film Registry 2023

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07373 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6171.

Passing Through is a 1977 feature directed, produced, written, and edited by Larry Clark, a leading figure of the L.A. Rebellion, the movement of Black filmmakers who studied at UCLA from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s and built an alternative to Hollywood cinema. The UCLA Film and Television Archive, which holds Clark's filmography, lists Passing Through as his 1977 work and summarizes its story: Eddie Warmack, an African American jazz musician, is released from prison for the killing of a white gangster. Clark's own UCLA biography adds that Warmack refuses to play for the mobsters who control the music industry and seeks out his mentor, the legendary Poppa Harris, and that the film features Horace Tapscott and his Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and was co-written by actor Ted Lange. It was Clark's first feature and his master's thesis film at UCLA, where he completed his M.F.A. in 1977. The film had its world premiere at Los Angeles's Filmex and won the Special Jury Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival. The Library of Congress lists Passing Through, under release year 1977, as selected for the National Film Registry in 2023.

The record

• Also known as: Passing Through (1977)

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 5 — 747 Program, Wave 12; fifth Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR (hand-checked 2026-10-16): no Passing Through entity or alias in the live graph (3,843 entities), and NO Larry Clark filmmaker Person entity exists in the graph. ID CTL-E-6171 free at staging. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 scan-tail reserve banked by Scan Tail Wave 4, corpus-gap-candidates ranked #2100. The scan supplied the name string only; every fact is sourced under CTL-GOV-004. SCOPE GATE: Core L.A. Rebellion work: a Black UCLA filmmaker's feature about a Black jazz musician's fight for artistic self-determination against a mob-controlled industry. Vital status: WORK — not applicable as a life status; the film survives in the UCLA Film & Television Archive's L.A. Rebellion holdings and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2023 (LOC, accessed 2026-10-16). STATISTICS — Dates and figures (accessed 2026-10-16): release year 1977 and National Film Registry induction 2023 (Library of Congress complete listing). Running time differs by source and is shown, not blended: CCCB lists 111 minutes; other catalog listings returned in research listed 104–105 minutes — no single runtime is asserted in the description. UCLA records Clark's M.F.A. in 1977, the year of the film. MEDIA: photo HELD (HELD — candidate: the UCLA Film & Television Archive still of Eddie Warmack and Poppa Harris playing saxophones from Passing Through, as carried on UCLA's Larry Clark page; NO license is claimed — PHOTO-001 verification deferred. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-6171-passing-through.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (not a place record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Work records carry no map slot.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created chart (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced statistics and timeline fact) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by nam) | audio = HELD (HELD: No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio exists at staging.)

Relationships

• Larry Clark — authored by
  The UCLA Film & Television Archive credits Passing Through (1977) to Clark as director, producer, writer and editor, and the Library of Congress credits the screenplay to Clark and Ted Lange. Closes the blocked edge documented in Scan Tail Wave 5.

Sources

• UCLA Film & Television Archive, Larry Clark filmmaker page (accessed 2026-10-16) — Clark's first feature Passing Through (1977), often cited as one of the best jazz films; featuring Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, co-written by Ted Lange; world premiere at Filmex, Special Jury Prize at Locarno; Clark education UCLA, M.F.A. 1977; filmography lists Passing Through (1977) with Clark as director, producer, writer, editor, and its Eddie Warmack story summary — https://cinema.ucla.edu/collections/la-rebellion/filmmakers/larry-clark/ (primary source · build store)
• Library of Congress, Complete National Film Registry Listing (accessed 2026-10-16) — Passing Through listed with year of release 1977 and year inducted into the National Film Registry 2023 — https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing (primary source · build store)
• Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), L.A. Rebellion: Passing Through, by Larry Clark (accessed 2026-10-16) — Passing Through as a major L.A. Rebellion work; Eddie Warmack seeks his mentor Poppa Harris while refusing the mobsters who control the music industry; 1977, 111 minutes as listed there — https://www.cccb.org/en/w/activities/la-rebellion-passing-through-by-larry-clark (build store)

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Record CTL-E-6171 · Combined Graph record U-07373 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 3 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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