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 | 1.6 |
Birthday | 1933-05-25 |
Place of Birth | Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA |
Also Known As | 켄 제이콥스, |
1962
Scotch Tape
4.2/20
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
6.2/10
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
6.7/10
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
5.7/6
Director Jonas Mekas travels through New York nights, through apartments, studios, backstage rooms, galleries, bars, and clubs. Encountering old acqua...
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Sleepless Nights Stories
2022
Fragments of Paradise
6.7/3
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
2.9/36
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 (I think) two rare Jacobs works: Nissan Ariana Win...
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Shorts From the Underground
2007
365 Day Project
0/0
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
7.8/68
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
8.2/9
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
6.6/7
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
6.3/3
Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.
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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?
6.4/21
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
7.5/10
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
5.5/4
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
2013
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
7.4/22
An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
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Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1976
Lost, Lost, Lost
7/22
Jonas Mekas adjusts to a life in exile in New York in his autobiographical film, shot between 1949 and 1963.
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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
6.958/12
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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