Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs is one of the most wildly creative and influential film artists in the medium’s history.
Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1933, Jacobs studied Abstract Expressionism with Hans Hofmann before turning to filmmaking. He became a prolific member of the underground scene, along with contemporaries Jonas Mekas, Jack Smith, and Stan Brakhage. Jacobs’s early films use New York City as a poetic landscape (Orchard Street) and as a setting for Smith’s carnivalesque performances (Little Stabs at Happiness and Blonde Cobra—both preserved by Anthology Film Archives). Jacobs then started experimenting with found footage, expanding a five-minute fragment of Billy Bitzer’s Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son to feature length (restored in 2K by Museum of Modern Art), and went on to embrace digital tools—using stroboscopic effects to turn silent shorts and Victorian stereoscopic photographs into mind-expanding 3D investigations (Capitalism: Child Labor).
Jacobs continues to push the boundaries of the art form, as with his hypnotically abstract Movie That Invites Pausing (2021). In addition to his landmark films—which have been honored by the American Film Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation—Jacobs and his wife Flo founded the free film school Millennium Film Workshop, and also helped create SUNY Binghamton’s experimental Department of Cinema in 1969, where he became a Distinguished Professor and influenced generations of artists and scholars.
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A Tom Tom Chaser
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2002 • Jacobs' poetic riff on the transformation of The Piper's Son.
A Tom Tom Chaser is Jacobs’s poetic riff on the transformation of his classic film Tom Tom the Piper's Son from chemical to digital form during the telecine process.
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Blonde Cobra
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1963
An impressionistic portrait of Jack Smith.
In Jacobs’s words—“Blonde Cobra is an erratic narrative—no, not really a narrative, it's only stretched out in time for convenience of delivery. It's a look in on an exploding life, on a man of imagination suffering p...
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Capitalism: Child Labor
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2006 • One of Jacobs' mind-expanding 3D projects.
Ken Jacobs started experimenting with found footage, and went on to embrace digital tools—using stroboscopic effects to turn silent shorts and Victorian stereoscopic photographs into mind-expanding 3D investigations i...
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Capitalism: Slavery
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2006 • In Jacobs' words: "Silent, mournful, brief."
Ken Jacobs started experimenting with found footage, and went on to embrace digital tools—using stroboscopic effects to turn silent shorts and Victorian stereoscopic photographs into mind-expanding 3D investigations...
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Little Stabs at Happiness
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1963 • Jacobs' poetic riff on the transformation of The Piper's Son.
In Jacob’s words—“Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100' rolls timed well with music on old 78's. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and a...
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Movie That Invites Pausing
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2020 • Per Jacobs, "The heady adventure of engagement with ambiguity."
Ken Jacobs continues to push the boundaries of the art form, as evidenced by the hypnotically abstract Movie that Invites Pausing.
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Orchard Street
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1955
Ken Jacobs’s early films use New York City as a poetic landscape, as evidenced in Orchard Street.
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Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2007 • Not featured on Kino Lorber's Blu-ray set.
In Jacobs’s words—“Razzle Dazzle is an early Edison shot cut off at its head and tail and along its four sides from the continuity of events like any camera-shot from a bygone day; no, like any camera-shot, immediatel...
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Reichstag 9/11
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2016
One of Ken Jacobs's most bracing and controversial works: a reframing of 9/11 marked by the director's belief in government conspiracy.
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Return to the Scene of the Crime
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2008 • Ken Jacobs' attempt to "seize" Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son.
Ken Jacobs revisits Billy Bitzer’s Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son—which he first disassembled in his 1969 film of the same name—to once again explore the vagaries of the visual and its endless capacity for m...
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Seeking the Monkey King
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2011 • An investigation of the space between two and three dimensions.
In Jacobs’s words, “The film could have well been called Kicking and Screaming but that only describes me in the process of making it, questioning its taste. Once the message kicked in it overrod...
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The Georgetown Loop
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1996 • Per Jacobs, "The first landscape film deserving of an X-rating."
Jacobs manipulates The Georgetown Loop (Colorado), archival footage shot in 1903 of a train that passes by the town of Georgetown, Colorado, near the Rocky Mountains. The mountain vista is mirro...
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The Sky Socialist
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1968 • Ken Jacobs' story of impossible love.
Ken Jacobs's most elusive and mysterious film is at once an allegory of movie-making, a demonstration of 8mm versatility, and a celebration of a now-vanished neighborhood beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
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The Sky Socialist: Environs and Outakes
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2019
Additional footage from Jacobs’s elusive film The Sky Socialist.
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The Whirled
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1961
An experimental reworking of four short films—Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice (1956), Little Cobra Dance (1956), Hunch Your Back (1963), and Death of P'Town (1961).
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The Whole Shebang
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2019 • Jacobs's interpretation of Depression-era footage.
Desperate daredevils compete for money prizes and a baby prepares for World War II in Jacobs's reworking of Depression-era footage. Fire, crashes, explosions, and rooftop escapades match a haunting score.
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Things to Come
Ken Jacobs • United States • 2019 • A radical spin on a long-gone time.
Ken Jacobs uses his 3-D technique to reanimate the century-old documentary New York 1911— a radical spin on a long-gone time.
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Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1969 • One of Ken Jacobs' great experiments in photography and editing.
Ken Jacobs started experimenting with found footage, expanding a five-minute fragment of Billy Bitzer’s Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son (1905) to feature length. In Jacobs’s words—“Ghosts! Cine-recor...
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Window
Ken Jacobs • United States • 1964 • Ken Jacobs' experiment with lenses and screens.
The moving camera shapes the screen image with great purposefulness, using the frame of a window as fulcrum upon which to wheel about the exterior scene. The zoom lens rips, pulling depth planes apart.
