Known For
Directing
Born
May 25, 1933
Died
Oct 05, 2025
Place of Birth
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Credits
313 titles
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
Filmography
Downtown Loft with Skylights
Director
A Date with Shirley
Director
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 43
Director
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 41
Director
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 42
Director
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 40
Director
Book of Eternalisms 39
Director
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
Self
BMT
Director
Riverbed
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 70
Director
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
Self
Book of Eternalisms 8
Director
Book of Eternalisms 7
Director
For James Otis
Director
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
Self
Up the Illusion
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Director
Writhing City
Director
From Introduction to Orson Welles’s Falstaff: Chimes at Midnight
Director
Other Urban Lives
Director
Book of Eternalisms 1-6
Director
Hobgoblin Ball
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 10
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 1
Director
Whims of Twenty Twenty-Three
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 20
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 5
Director
Manhattan is an Island
Director
Spasm
Director
Tourists of the Familiar 15
Director
Real Action Figures
Director
When Timofeev Moves Everything Moves
Director
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
Fragments of Paradise
Self
Sergei Eisenstein Embossed
Director
Buster Keaton Embossed
Director
Eat the Rich: Aligning Perspectives and Other Challenges to Viewers
Director
America Lets Her Hair Down 1905
Director
One Dozen Roses
Director
Eternal Beach
Director
Abstract Eternalism
Director
Double Wow
Director
XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX
Editor
Hoffman Student
Director
A Small Misunderstanding
Director
Aspiring To Music
Director
Cartoonish 1-10
Director
Adventures of Cookie Truck
Director
In Front of Anthology
Director