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Ken Jacobs

Ken Jacobs

Directing

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
7.7

A compilation of over 30 years of private home movie footage shot by Lithuanian-American avant-garde director Jonas Mekas, assembled by Mekas "purely by chance", without concern for chronological order.

As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

2000
60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero
4.2

An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

2011
Sleepless Nights Stories
5.3

Unable to sleep, Jonas Mekas drifts through New York nights, moving between apartments, studios, galleries, bars, and clubs. Along the way he encounters friends and fellow artists—including Ken and Flo Jacobs and Yoko Ono—capturing an intimate mosaic of nocturnal encounters, reflections, and moments of community.

Sleepless Nights Stories

2011
365 Day Project
10.0

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 an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

365 Day Project

2007
Birth of a Nation
7.0

Jonas Mekas assembles 160 portraits, appearances, and fleeting sketches of underground and independent filmmakers captured between 1955 and 1996. Fast-paced and archival in spirit, the film celebrates the avant-garde as its own “nation of cinema,” a vital community existing outside the dominance of commercial film.

Birth of a Nation

1997
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
7.2

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches

1968
What Is Cinema?
6.5

Using the words and ideas of great filmmakers, from archival interviews with Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Bresson to new interviews with Mike Leigh, David Lynch, and Jonas Mekas, Oscar-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman shows what these filmmakers and others do that can't be expressed in words - but only in cinema.

What Is Cinema?

2013
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
N/A

Founded by Richard Linklater in 1985 as a screening series dedicated to bringing experimental and art cinema to the city of Austin, Texas, the Austin Film Society has grown into a cornerstone of the city's creative community - while remaining true to its edgy, eclectic roots.

Art-House America: Austin Film Society

2023
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
8.4

A film collage tracing the story of the lives, loves, and deaths within the artistic community surrounding Jonas Mekas.

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life

1986
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
6.6

In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis

2007
20 Little Films
N/A

Since 1995, the Viennale has invited renowned directors to create short, one-minute films as personal contributions to the festival. Ranging from home movies to political essays, musical sketches to abstract studies, these “little films” form a unique anthology of cinematic moments. 20 Little Films collects a selection of these works, premiering together for the Viennale’s 50th anniversary at the Locarno Film Festival.

20 Little Films

2012
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
9.0

Explores the life and career of cartoonist Art Spiegelman including the creation and ground-breaking impact of his Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel MAUS.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse

2025
Momma's Man
6.2

An adult decides to escape the pressures of life and return to his old bedroom at his parents' house.

Momma's Man

2008
Jonas in the Desert
6.4

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 independent U.S. movies; founder and director of the New York Anthology Film Archive.

Jonas in the Desert

1994
Fragments of Paradise
6.5

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 diary films. From his arrival in New York City as a displaced person in 1949 to his death in 2019, he chronicled the trauma and loss of exile while pioneering institutions to support the growth of independent film in the United States. Fragments of Paradise is an intimate look at his life and work constructed from thousands of hours of his own video and film diaries-including never-before-seen tapes and unpublished audio recordings. It is a story about finding beauty amidst profound loss, and a man who tried to make sense of it all... with a camera.

Fragments of Paradise

2022
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
6.8

Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up as part of the experimental film community.

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film

2011
No image
N/A

This very special film features a carefully curated selection of some of the priceless messages that have graced Anthology’s voicemail system over the years. From the historically important to the utterly (and sublimely) absurd, they feature a cast of characters ranging from legendary avant-garde filmmakers, scholars, and other cultural figures to civilians whose legend has (until now) been confined to the offices of Anthology, thanks precisely to their witty, eloquent, eccentric – or in some cases unforgettably psychotic – voicemails. We’ve toyed with the idea of sharing these messages in some form for years, and the “Imageless Films” series provides a perfect pretext.

Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages

2022
For Life, Against the War
6.0

First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.

For Life, Against the War

1967
Bill's Hat
N/A

"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’s only love: therefore it can’t harm you". Joyce Wieland.

Bill's Hat

1967
Blonde Cobra
3.0

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 soundtrack speaks of his despair, makes impressionistic statements and little songs, quotes Greta Garbo and Maria Montez, tells the story of a lonely little boy and tells the story of a woman named Madame Nescience who dreams of herself as the Mother Superior of a convent of sexual perversion.

Blonde Cobra

1963