Ken Jacobs
Known For: Directing
Gender: Male
Date of Birth: May 25, 1933 (92 years old)
Place of Birth: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA
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.
2023
Director
Spasm
Director
Up the Illusion
Director
Whims of Twenty Twenty-Three
Director
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 1
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 5
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 10
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 15
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 20
Director
Book of Eternalisms 1-6
Director
Other Urban Lives
Director
From Introduction to Orson Welles’s Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight
Director
Writhing City
2022
Actor Self
Fragments of Paradise
Actor
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
Director
Sergei Eisenstein Embossed
Director
Buster Keaton Embossed
Director
One Dozen Roses
Director
America Let's Her Hair Down 1905
Director
Real Action Figures
Director
When Timofeev Moves Everything Moves
2021
2020
Director
Rubble
Director
Rain Clouds
Director
RECIPROCAL
Director
PAINTED POSTER
Director
DR. TOOTHY
Director
Red Green
Director
Ken and Flo
Director
Barber
Director
Foliage in Moving Car Window
Director
Facade with Face
Director
Doyer Street
Director
DeKooning Passed
Director
Sleeping American
Director
Roots of Manhattan
Director
Reading Society
Director
Lazy City
Director
Waiting Room Window
Director
Natural Collage
Director
Bison
Director
Working Girls (short)
Director
Friendly Building
Director
Broadway Buildings II
Director
Bargains
Director
City Foliage
Director
Broadway Buildings III
Director
Chinese New Years II
Director
Chinese New Years
Director
Brick Building with Red and Green Windows
Director
Fire Escape
Director
Broadway Building
Director
Duck
Director
Street Commerce
Director
Resting Merchant
Director
Neon Sign
Director
Flowers and Bike
Director
Street Commerce II
Director
Halley’s Comet
Director
Water Balloon
Director
Spaceworks
Director
Period Piece
Director
Bandit
Director
Another Day in Days of Yore
Director
Garage Wall
Director
Whirlpool
Director
Hubble II
Director
Transparent Apartments
Director
Spiky
Director
Storefront
Director
Municipal Building Passage
Director
Clouds and Trees
Director
Movie That Invites Pausing
2019
Director
Cartoon
Director
Chaos Is Order Misunderstood
Director
Nervous Magic Lantern: 3D for One or Two Naked Eyes
Director
Dimsum and Dragons
Director
Details of Pollock's White Light
Director
Joan Mitchell: Departures
Director
Once Upon a Planet
Director
Above the Rain
Director
The Sky Socialist: The Environs
Director
THE WHOLE SHEBANG
Director
Things to Come
Director
Sebastian and Jonas Leaving the Party
Director
Failure
Director
CRUSH
Director
Figures I - V
Director
PAPPY SEES 3D, TOO
Director
MOVING ROAD
2018
2017
2016
Actor
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
Director
Reichstag 9/11
Director
Mosco Street 3: Attack of The Perfect Camera (Fuji W3)
Director
Mosco Street 2
Director
Hydroelectric Dam
Director
I'm Telling You
Director
Lurking
Director
Molten Landscape
Director
Ken Jacobs / diNMachine @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Director
Ken Jacobs / JG Thirlwell @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Director
Ken Jacobs / Ghosts Of The Holy Ghost Spermic Brotherhood @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Director
Ken Jacobs / Victoria Keddie @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Director
Ken Jacobs / Tom Chiu of Flux Quartet @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Director
Ken Jacobs / Robert Poss @The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
Director
Ken Jacobs / Rick Reed & Tara Bhattacharya @ The Nervous Magic Lantern Festival
2015
2014
2013
Actor Self
What Is Cinema?
Actor Self
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Director
A Primer in Sky Socialism
Director
Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus #2
Technical Supervisor
Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus #2
Director
Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus #4
Director
Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus #3
Director
Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus #1
2012
2011
Actor Himself
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Actor Self
Sleepless Nights Stories
Actor Himself
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
Director
Seeking the Monkey King
Director
DAY AND NIGHT
Director
America at War, The Home Front: Film Opening
Director
Another Occupation
Writer
Another Occupation
Director
The Pushcarts Leave Eternity Street
Writer
The Pushcarts Leave Eternity Street
Director
The Green Wave
Director
Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
Director
The Roses
Director
Revolving Door
Director
60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero
Director
Turbulent Waters
2010
2009
Director
The Day Was a Scorcher
Writer
The Day Was a Scorcher
Director
The Signing
Director
Berkeley To San Francisco
Director
“Slow is Beauty”—Rodin
Director
What Happened on 23rd Street in 1901
Director
Jonas Mekas in Kodachrome Days
Director
Brain Operations
Director
Excerpt From THE SKY SOCIALIST Stratified
Director
Bob Fleischner Dying
Director
Brook
Director
Ronald Gonzales, Sculptor
Director
Hot Dogs At The Met
Director
Gravity Is Tops
Director
Walkway
2008
2007
Actor
365 Day Project
Actor Self
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Director
Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World
Director
New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903
Director
Capitalism: Child Labor
Director
Capitalism: Slavery
Producer
New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903
Director
Gift of Fire: Nineteen (Obscure) Frames That Changed The World
Director
Nymph
Director
Hanky Panky January 1902
Director
We Are Charming
Director
The Whirled
Director
Titles
Director
Popeye Sees 3-D, TOO
Director
Mosco Street Rapture
Director
Nervous Lantern at Kill Your Timid Notion Festival
2006
2005
Director
Incendiary Cinema
Director
Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise
Director
Let There Be Whistle Blowers
Director
Krypton Is Doomed
Director
Spiral Nebula
Writer
Spiral Nebula
Director
Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye Molly
Producer
Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise
Editor
Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise
Director
Le Prince: Leeds Bridge 1888
Director
Insistent Clamor
