Ken Jacobs
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
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
What Is Cinema?
365 Day Project
Fragments of Paradise
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
Lost, Lost, Lost
Momma's Man
All Movies (37)
- Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse2025 · as Self
- Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art2023 · as Self
- Art-House America: Austin Film Society2023 · as Self
- Up the Illusion2023
- Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages2022
- Fragments of Paradise2022 · as Self
- Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas2016
- What Is Cinema?2013 · as Self
- The Eternal Courtship2013
- Emma's Dilemma2012 · as Himself
- Sleepless Nights Stories2011 · as Self
- Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film2011 · as Himself
- Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin2011 · as Himself
- Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman2011
- Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?2010 · as Himself
- Lavender2010 · as Self
- Momma's Man2008 · as Dad
- 365 Day Project2007 · as Self
- Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis2007 · as Self
- Star Spangled to Death2004 · as Oscar Friendly / Ringmaster / Janitor
- Nervous Ken2003
- Shorts From the Underground2002 · as Self
- Flo and Ken Jacobs2001
- As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty2000 · as Self
- Birth of a Nation1997 · as Self
- Jonas in the Desert1994 · as Self
- Quartet Number One1991
- He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life1986 · as Self (archive footage)
- Home Movies 1971-811985
- Lost, Lost, Lost1976 · as Self
- Horizons1973
- Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”1973
- Huge Pupils1968 · as Himself
- Diaries, Notes, and Sketches1968 · as Self
- Bill's Hat1967
- Blonde Cobra1963
- Scotch Tape1962