Ken Jacobs
Directing
Born May 25, 1933 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA
A pioneer of the American film avant-garde of the 1960s and '70s, Ken Jacobs is a central figure in post-war experimental cinema. From his first films of the late 1950s to his recent experiments with digital video, his investigations and innovations have influenced countless artists. A New Yorker by birth, Jacobs graduated from City University to find himself in the midst of the downtown art scene of the 1960s, which included artists Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; and the experimental theater troupes of Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer. Although Jacobs had studied painting with Hans Hoffman, he quickly gravitated to film, finding kindred spirits in radical filmmakers such as Jonas Mekas and Hollis Frampton. An early friendship with Jack Smith yielded several collaborations, including the seminal underground films Blonde Cobra (which Jonas Mekas dubbed "the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema") and Little Stabs at Happiness, as well as a Provincetown beach-based live show, The Human Wreckage Review.
Filmography
Sky Dive
Depth for One Eye or Two
Spotted Fever
Downtown Loft with Skylights
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 43
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 41
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 42
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 40
Book of Eternalisms 39
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
Self
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
Self
Book of Eternalisms 8
Book of Eternalisms 7
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
Self
Up the Illusion
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Writhing City
From Introduction to Orson Welles’s Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight
Other Urban Lives
Book of Eternalisms 1-6
Spasm
Whims of Twenty Twenty-Three
Tourists of the Familiar 1
Tourists of the Familiar 5
Tourists of the Familiar 10
Tourists of the Familiar 15
Tourists of the Familiar 20
Real Action Figures
When Timofeev Moves Everything Moves
Fragments of Paradise
Self
Sergei Eisenstein Embossed
Buster Keaton Embossed
One Dozen Roses
America Lets Her Hair Down 1905
Eternal Beach
Abstract Eternalism
Double Wow
XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX
Cartoonish 1-10
A Small Misunderstanding
Adventures of Cookie Truck
Hoffman Student
Aspiring To Music
Movie That Invites Pausing
Storefront
Transparent Apartments
Spiky
Municipal Building Passage
Clouds and Trees
Hubble II
Whirlpool
Halley’s Comet
Water Balloon
Spaceworks
Another Day in Days of Yore
Garage Wall
Period Piece
Street Commerce II
Street Commerce
Resting Merchant
Broadway Buildings II
Broadway Buildings III
Neon Sign
Flowers and Bike
Brick Building with Red and Green Windows
Broadway Building
Fire Escape
Duck
Chinese New Years
Chinese New Years II
Doyer Street
Sleeping American
DeKooning Passed
Waiting Room Window
Natural Collage
Reading Society
Roots of Manhattan
Lazy City
Bison
Friendly Building
Working Girls (short)
Bargains
City Foliage
Barber
Foliage in Moving Car Window
Facade with Face
RECIPROCAL
Red Green
Ken and Flo
Rain Clouds
PAINTED POSTER
DR. TOOTHY
Rubble
CRUSH
PAPPY SEES 3D, TOO
Failure
Sebastian and Jonas Leaving the Party
Things to Come
MOVING ROAD
Figures I - V
THE WHOLE SHEBANG
ABSTRACT
Chaos Is Order Misunderstood
Above the Rain
The Sky Socialist: The Environs
Joan Mitchell: Departures
Once Upon a Planet
Details of Pollock's White Light
Cartoon
Nervous Magic Lantern: 3D for One or Two Naked Eyes
Dimsum and Dragons
The Moments: Evening Boat Ride
Tree Stump
Swee’pea’s Favorite Eternalisms
Shelley Duvall is Olive Oyl
A Spin Through Night City
Ulysses in the Subway
Central Park
Snow in Headlights II
Reichstag 9/11
BMT Canal Street
Mosco Street 3: Attack of The Perfect Camera (Fuji W3)
Mosco Street 2
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
Ken Jacobs / Victoria Keddie @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Ken Jacobs / Tom Chiu of Flux Quartet @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Ken Jacobs / Ghosts Of The Holy Ghost Spermic Brotherhood @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Ken Jacobs / Rick Reed & Tara Bhattacharya @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Ken Jacobs / Robert Poss @The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Ken Jacobs / diNMachine @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Ken Jacobs / JG Thirlwell @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Hydroelectric Dam
Empty Seats
Batchellor’s Dog and Beach
Afternoon Tide
Chrysalis
The Lackadaisical Speed of Light
Granular
Canopy
What Is Cinema?
Self
The Eternal Courtship
Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus #2
Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus #1
Emma's Dilemma
Himself
Blankets for Indians
Street Vendor
20 Little Films
60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero
Sleepless Nights Stories
Self
OCCUPY WALL STREET, THE 99% JOIN IN
Seeking the Monkey King
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Himself
The Pushcarts Leave Eternity Street
Turbulent Waters
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
Himself
The Roses
The Green Wave
Another Occupation
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
DAY AND NIGHT
A Loft
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
Himself
The Near-Collision
Lavender
Self
Jonas Mekas in Kodachrome Days
Excerpt From THE SKY SOCIALIST Stratified
Walkway
Brook
Bob Fleischner Dying
Brain Operations
"Slow is Beauty"-Rodin
What Happened on 23rd Street in 1901
Gravity Is Tops
The Day Was a Scorcher
The Signing
Return to the Scene of the Crime
Amorous Interludes: His Favorite Wife Improved (or The Virtue Of Bad Reception)
The Scenic Route
Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks)
Momma's Man
Dad
365 Day Project
Self
Gift of Fire: Nineteen (Obscure) Frames That Changed The World
Hanky Panky January 1902
Nymph
We Are Charming
Capitalism: Slavery
Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World
Nervous Lantern at Kill Your Timid Notion Festival
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Self
New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903
Capitalism: Child Labor
Monks of Cinema
Pushcarts of Eternity Street
Two Wrenching Departures
Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise
Insistent Clamor
Le Prince: Leeds Bridge 1888
Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye Molly
Let There Be Whistle Blowers
Krypton Is Doomed
Spiral Nebula
Star Spangled to Death
Oscar Friendly / Ringmaster / Janitor
Nervous Ken
Keeping an Eye on Stan
The Whirled
Circling Zero: Part One, We See Absence
A Tom Tom Chaser
The Sky Socialist: Flight
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Self
New York Street Trolleys 1900
Flo Rounds a Corner
Birth of a Nation
Self
Disorient Express
The Georgetown Loop
Looting For Rodney
Bitemporal Vision: The Sea
Jonas in the Desert
Self
Quartet Number One
Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896
Keaton's Cops
Chronometer
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
Self (archive footage)
Perfect Film
Home Movies 1971-81
The Doctor's Dream
Book of Splendors, Part Two, Book of Levers: Action at a Distance
Lost, Lost, Lost
Self
Spaghetti Aza
Urban Peasants
Jerry Takes A Back Seat, Then Passes Out Of The Picture
Horizons
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
Binghamton, My India
Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Globe
Huge Pupils
Himself
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Self
Soft Rain
For Life, Against the War
Bill's Hat
Airshaft
The Sky Socialist
Lisa and Joey in Connecticut
1st Window
Window
The Winter Footage
Artie and Marty Rosenblatt’s Baby Pictures
Little Stabs at Happiness
TV Plug
Blonde Cobra
Scotch Tape
Baud'larian Capers
The Death of P'town
Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice
Little Cobra Dance
Orchard Street