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.
| Known For | Directing |
|---|---|
| Most Rating | 0.5038 |
| Birthday | 1933-05-25 |
| Place of Birth | Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Also Known As | 켄 제이콥스, |
1963
Scotch Tape
4.4/21
Shot in 1959, Scotch Tape is Jack Smith's first film -- a joyous, three-minute romp, in color, using Peter Duchin's rhumba "Carinhoso" for its soundtr...
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Scotch Tape
2008
Momma's Man
6.2/12
An adult decides to escape the pressures of life and return to his old bedroom at his parents' house.
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Momma's Man
2011
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
6.8/12
Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up a...
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Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
2010
Lavender
0/0
A wholesome moment: Jonas Mekas, MM Serra, Ken Jacobs, and Flo Jacobs take lavender from a stranger's bush.
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Lavender
1985
Home Movies 1971-81
0/0
Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.
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Home Movies 1971-81
2011
Sleepless Nights Stories
5.3/7
Unable to sleep, Jonas Mekas drifts through New York nights, moving between apartments, studios, galleries, bars, and clubs. Along the way he encounte...
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Sleepless Nights Stories
2022
Fragments of Paradise
6.5/4
For over 70 years, Jonas Mekas, internationally known as the "godfather" of avant-garde cinema, documented his life in what came to be known as his di...
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Fragments of Paradise
2022
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
0/0
This very special film features a carefully curated selection of some of the priceless messages that have graced Anthology’s voicemail system over the...
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Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
1968
Huge Pupils
0/0
In 1968, Noren finished Huge Pupils, a gorgeous, sensuous, sexually outrageous visual study of his daily life, and part I of an ongoing series he woul...
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Huge Pupils
1963
Blonde Cobra
2.951/41
A man fondles objects, looks at himself in the mirror, poses in different clothes, smiles and makes faces at the camera while his voice on the soundtr...
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Blonde Cobra
2002
Shorts From the Underground
0/0
Features interviews with famed underground filmmaker Ken Jacobs and associates, and screens in full two rare Jacobs works: Nissan Ariana Window, and S...
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Shorts From the Underground
2007
365 Day Project
10/1
This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for...
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365 Day Project
2000
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
7.75/86
A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely...
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As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
1986
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
8.4/10
A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.
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He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
2007
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
6.7/10
In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's perform...
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Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
1997
Birth of a Nation
7/4
Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast...
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Birth of a Nation
1967
Bill's Hat
0/0
"The whole film are non-art portraits of people in which they do what they want with this hat – and therefore, act or stand in front of my camera. It’...
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Bill's Hat
2013
What Is Cinema?
6.4/25
Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, Da...
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What Is Cinema?
2004
Star Spangled to Death
7.7/11
An examination of the history of the U.S. through archival footage and contrasting views of society, incorporating audiovisual material ranging from p...
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Star Spangled to Death
1994
Jonas in the Desert
6.4/5
Not a documentary in the strictest sense of the word. Rather, it is a journey through the world of the artist Jonas Mekas - one of the exponents of in...
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Jonas in the Desert
2012
Emma's Dilemma
1/1
Henry Hills’s Emma’s Dilemma reinvents the portrait for the age of digital reproduction. In a set of tour-de-force probes into the images and essences...
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Emma's Dilemma
1968
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
7.3/32
Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends,...
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Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1976
Lost, Lost, Lost
7.1/24
Drawn from footage shot between 1949 and 1963, Jonas Mekas’s autobiographical diary film chronicles his early years in exile, capturing the struggle t...
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Lost, Lost, Lost
1991
Quartet Number One
7.5/2
Quartet Number One (1991) 8 min.
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Quartet Number One
2011
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
7/12
A series of video letters between José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas.
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Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
2010
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
5/1
The documentary’s starting point is the discovery and restoration of a rare and unknown photography reel reproduced from a mutoscope film, made in 190...
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Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
2016
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
0/0
A “Cinéma, de notre temps” series episode directed by french filmmaker Jackie Raynal, originally aired 29 May 2016.
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Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
1973
Horizons
8.5/6
Working with Virgil’s four-part poem “Georgics” and Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos “The Four Seasons” as models, Gottheim arranged his painterly composit...
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Horizons
2003
Nervous Ken
0/0
In NERVOUS KEN, experimental film legend Ken Jacobs is "interviewed" by my urbane 12-year old M.C., Emma Bernstein. Envisioning an exploration of the...
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Nervous Ken
2023
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
0/0
Founded by Richard Linklater in 1985 as a screening series dedicated to bringing experimental and art cinema to the city of Austin, Texas, the Austin...
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Art-House America: Austin Film Society
2025
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
8.2/4
Explores the life and career of cartoonist Art Spiegelman including the creation and ground-breaking impact of his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic nove...
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Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
2013
The Eternal Courtship
0/0
In celebration of his 80th birthday, here is:
THE ETERNAL COURTSHIP (an ipad short)
For Ken and Flo Jacobs,
with love and affection from all of us...
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The Eternal Courtship
2023
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
0/0
One of the most extraordinary personalities in the history of moving images, native New Yorker Ken Jacobs, and his wife and long-time creative partner...
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Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
1973
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
0/0
During the 1970s I shot, helped to make, or commissioned about ten document films, mainly about film-makers. This film is one of them. It was made wit...
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Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
2023
Up the Illusion
0/0
A celebration of Ken Jacobs' work at 80WSE.
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Up the Illusion
2011
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
0/0
A young woman stands by a car while scenes from metropolitan life flash by.
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Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
2001
Flo and Ken Jacobs
0/0
"I filmed Flo and Ken Jacobs in 2001 when they visited me in my studio (the School of Artistic Photography, Vienna). Our acquaintance, friendship bega...
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