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Ken Jacobs
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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 spi…
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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.
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BODY OF WORK
Ken Jacobs's Filmography
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About Space and Depth
Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse
as Self
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
as Self
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
as Self
Up the Illusion
No Poster
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
Fragments of Paradise
as Self
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
What Is Cinema?
as Self
The Eternal Courtship
Emma's Dilemma
as Himself
Sleepless Nights Stories
as Self
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
as Himself
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
as Himself
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
as Himself
Lavender
as Self
Momma's Man
as Dad
365 Day Project
as Self
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
as Self
Star Spangled to Death
as Oscar Friendly / Ringmaster / Janitor
Nervous Ken
No Poster
Shorts From the Underground
as Self
No Poster
Flo and Ken Jacobs
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
as Self
Laboratorium Anthology
Birth of a Nation
as Self
Jonas in the Desert
as Self
Quartet Number One
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
as Self (archive footage)
Home Movies 1971-81
Lost, Lost, Lost
as Self
Horizons
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
Huge Pupils
as Himself
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
as Self
Bill's Hat
Blonde Cobra
