Directing
Ken Jacobs
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
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
Film · 2025
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
Film · 2023
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
Film · 2023
Up the Illusion
Film · 2023
Fragments of Paradise
Film · 2022
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
Film · 2022
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
Film · 2016
What Is Cinema?
Film · 2013
The Eternal Courtship
Film · 2013
Emma's Dilemma
Film · 2012
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Film · 2011
Sleepless Nights Stories
Film · 2011
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
Film · 2011
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
Film · 2011
Lavender
Film · 2010
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
Film · 2010
Momma's Man
Film · 2008
365 Day Project
Film · 2007
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Film · 2007
Star Spangled to Death
Film · 2004
Nervous Ken
Film · 2003
Shorts From the Underground
Film · 2002
Flo and Ken Jacobs
Film · 2001
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Film · 2000
Laboratorium Anthology
Film · 1999
Birth of a Nation
Film · 1997
Jonas in the Desert
Film · 1994
Quartet Number One
Film · 1991
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
Film · 1986
Home Movies 1971-81
Film · 1985
Lost, Lost, Lost
Film · 1976
Horizons
Film · 1973
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
Film · 1973
Huge Pupils
Film · 1968
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Film · 1968
Bill's Hat
Film · 1967
Scotch Tape
Film · 1963
Blonde Cobra
Film · 1963