Ken Jacobs
Directing
- Born:
- 1933-05-25
- Died:
- 2025-10-05
- Place of birth:
- 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
Filmography
About Space and Depth
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
Up the Illusion
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
Fragments of Paradise
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
What Is Cinema?
The Eternal Courtship
Emma's Dilemma
Sleepless Nights Stories
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
Lavender
Momma's Man
365 Day Project
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Star Spangled to Death
Nervous Ken
Shorts From the Underground
Flo and Ken Jacobs
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Laboratorium Anthology
Birth of a Nation
Jonas in the Desert
Quartet Number One
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
Home Movies 1971-81
Lost, Lost, Lost
Horizons
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
Huge Pupils
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Bill's Hat
Blonde Cobra
Scotch Tape