Movies: Ken Jacobs

Description by Ken Jacobs: Get Up and Go is a glimpse given dimension. No day is complete without a visit to Chinatown and on this day my movie camera caught a woman rising from a bench. That’s all (the obvious influence is James Joyce's Ulysses). M...

An Eternalism film....

"Abstract Expressionist Cinema"...

An experimental feature made by rephotographing the 1905 Biograph short Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son....

"Abstract Expressionist Cinema"...

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 p...

An anaglyph 3-D film by Ken Jacobs...

Foreman’s longtime friend Ken Jacobs situated himself in the audience of the legendary Ontological-Hysteric theater space at 491 Broadway to shoot this whiplash-inducing single-frame study of a dynamic play filled with frantic action, full frontal nu...

Jacobs’s hypnotic “3-D” adaptation of New York 1911, a long-forgotten Swedish documentary restored by MoMA in 2017, is representative of his current work....

Description by Ken Jacobs: A Spin Through Night City gets many visual elements spinning. Only daughter Nisi working at our computer knows how difficult it is to get both foreground—rain on the cab window—and background -the city streets—in focus at ...

One of Ken Jacobs' Amorous Interludes...

A story told by director Ken Jacobs but without conventional storyline. Using a modified magic lantern, an early type of image projector developed in the 17th century, he morphs, flickering images that look like photo-negatives....

An Eternalism film....

Film by Ken Jacobs. Exists as both 2D and 3D Version...

Studying painting with Hans Hofmann had sensitized me to depth phenomena, to strange readings of depth including the most unnatural: flat. In 1964, I learned of the Pulfrich Effect and gained access to wholly illusionistic depth way beyond indication...

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 scen...

A 3-D vacation album, The Day Was a Scorcher pictures what Jacobs describes as "movie-star Flo, Nisi the thoughtful young girl, and Aza old enough to trudge with the rest of us, but still expecting to be pushed around on wheels," frolicking in a sun-...

Using his trademark flicker method, Ken Jacobs pays homage to the oldest type of color film, Kodachrome (whose production was discontinued in 2009) and to Jonas Mekas, who managed to breathe life into Kodachrome....

One of the most extraordinary personalities in the history of moving images, native New Yorker Ken Jacobs, and his wife and long-time creative partner Flo Jacobs, sit down for a series of discussions, reflecting on numerous clips from the many films ...

First screened as part of Jacobs' "Nervous System" film performance, The Georgetown Loop is based on an archival film from 1903, which Jacobs pairs with its mirror double to produce a kaleidoscopic two-screen projection. The original film depicts a j...