Ken Jacobs
Directing • Born 1933-05-25 – Died 2025-10-05
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.
Filmography
34 credits
Scotch Tape
Movie • 1962
Momma's Man
Movie • 2008
Dad
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Movie • 2011
Himself
Lavender
Movie • 2010
Self
Home Movies 1971-81
Movie • 1985
Sleepless Nights Stories
Movie • 2011
Self
Fragments of Paradise
Movie • 2022
Self
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
Movie • 2022
Huge Pupils
Movie • 1968
Himself
Blonde Cobra
Movie • 1963
Shorts From the Underground
Movie • 2002
Self
365 Day Project
Movie • 2007
Self
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
Movie • 2000
Self
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
Movie • 1986
Self (archive footage)
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Movie • 2007
Self
Birth of a Nation
Movie • 1997
Self
Bill's Hat
Movie • 1967
What Is Cinema?
Movie • 2013
Self
Star Spangled to Death
Movie • 2004
Oscar Friendly / Ringmaster / Janitor
Jonas in the Desert
Movie • 1994
Self
Emma's Dilemma
Movie • 2012
Himself
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Movie • 1968
Self
Lost, Lost, Lost
Movie • 1976
Self
Quartet Number One
Movie • 1991
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
Movie • 2011
Himself
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
Movie • 2010
Himself
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
Movie • 2016
Horizons
Movie • 1973
Nervous Ken
Movie • 2003
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
Movie • 2023
Self
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
Movie • 2025
Self
The Eternal Courtship
Movie • 2013
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
Movie • 2023
Self
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
Movie • 1973