Ken Jacobs
Directing
Born: 1933-05-25 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Biography
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.
Known For
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Self
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
Himself
Birth of a Nation
Self
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
Self (archive footage)
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Self
Flo and Ken Jacobs
What Is Cinema?
Self
365 Day Project
Self
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
Self
Sleepless Nights Stories
Self
Blonde Cobra
Jonas in the Desert
Self
Lost, Lost, Lost
Self
Fragments of Paradise
Self
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
Home Movies 1971-81
Up the Illusion
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Himself
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Self
Momma's Man
Dad
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
Self
Bill's Hat
Star Spangled to Death
Oscar Friendly / Ringmaster / Janitor
Horizons
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
Himself
The Eternal Courtship
Quartet Number One
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
Huge Pupils
Himself
Lavender
Self
Emma's Dilemma
Himself
Nervous Ken
Scotch Tape
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
Self