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

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

Ken Jacobs writes: "An antique stereograph image of cotton-pickers, computer-animated to present the scene in an active depth even to single-eyed viewers. Silent, mournful, brief."
In Capitalism: Slavery, Jacobs uses a Victorian stereograph (a double-photograph) of slaves picking cotton under the watchful eye of a white overseer as the source for this wrenching silent work. Through digital manipulation, Jacobs creates a haunting illusion of depth and movement. It is as if he has "entered" the image and reactivated this historical moment; he moves among the figures and isolates individuals, creating a stuttering, pulsing effect that suggests motion even as it animates stasis.

"Incredible black and white abstract image manipulation from NY Avant Garde film legend Ken Jacobs, accompanied by John Zorn and Ikue Mori on laptop sounds. Completely uncompromising (and at first near-unwatchable until the eye adjusts to the relentless throbbing effect of the Nervous Magic Lantern improvising system) this is beautiful and demanding stuff. Accompanied by eerie, relentlessly experimental 'music' that works Zorn's 'Redbird' and 'Absinthe' pieces into the outpourings of Mori's sublime laptop genius (and also offers an intriguing suggestion of what the Zorn/Mori/Patton Hemophiliac project could have been) this is, at times like a surreal ghost film, at others like a malevolent vision from inner space, at others like a stunning documentary from unseen areas of the natural world.
Sometimes gruelling, always fascinating -and a draining experience even on the small screen - this is an essential piece of experimental art from three absolute masters of their genre."--

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.

Part of his “Nervous System” performances, the artist’s skills as a projectionist were highlighted when he invented this specially designed system of two analytic stop-motion projectors, equipped with a spinning exterior shutter, enabling him to compare stills of found footage side by side. While he wanted to be as frank about sexuality as possible, Jacobs was mostly uninterested in the pornographic content of the film, favoring the discussion it prompted about the depth of the formal elements of movement.

Ken Jacobs的一部3D实验电影。
Premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in May 2013, A Primer in Sky Socialism continues avant-garde film pioneer Ken Jacobs’ exploration into 3D filmmaking, renewing his fascination with the histories and technologies of the moving image, a theme that has preoccupied his work for over 50 years. Shot on the Brooklyn Bridge with a view of the fireworks, this long-form film privileges the experiential over narrative drive. Using quick edits and effects to focus on the expressive and aesthetic experience of cinematic form, Jacobs uses digital 3D processing to delve into the human perception of depth in a dizzyingly brightly colored nighttime perspective of a bustling New York City.

The film could have well been called Kicking and Screeming but that only describes me in the process of making it, questioning its taste. Once the message kicked in it overrode all objection. The piece demanded J.G.Thirlwell’s music, normally way too overtly expressive for me as most of my stuff comes out of painting and is also to be absorbed in silence. Who will even notice visual innovation now, or what’s happening with time? Determining a place between two and three dimensions, pushing time to take on substance, is what I do. Seeking the Monkey King is a reversion to my mid-twenties and that sense of horror that drove the making of Star Spangled to Death. —Ken Jacobs

Black and white evokes nostalgia for the Great Depression. Things were so cheap, including lives. We see daredevils (desperate people) compete for money prizes. Baby prepares for World War II.

To dream of that beach
For the sake of an instant in the eyes
The absolute singular
The unearthly bonds
Of the singular
Which is the bright light of shipwreck”
- George Oppen from Of Being Numerous
“All hallucinations of Paradise Lost come from the longing to levitate.
Vision is lightship and shipwreck”
- Herbert Postl from Ideal Forms of Vanishing
@ Moma

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.

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.

有些人拍片无数，有些人也许只为那仅有的一部或几部电影而活着，孰轻孰重，孰对孰错，自然有人会明了。

这是来自美国实验电影大师肯.雅克布斯的6小时42分钟先锋纪录片巨作，《星光照亮死亡》据说是花了他近50年竭力创作的一部集大成之作，美国政治，种族，地下电影等等半个世纪的历史和发展均收录其中，1957年当雅克布斯还是一位青年独立电影人的时候就开始构思和收集影片素材，几十年间他为这部影片可以说倾尽全部，影片所有的资金设备创作全部由他自己独立承担，直到2004年才得以完成，2006年正式发行。

Starring: Jack Smith, Jerry Sims, Gib Taylor, Bill Carpenter, Cecilia Swan, Laurie Taylor, Bob Fleischner, Reese Haire, Jim Enterline, and Ken Jacobs.

"It's a stimulating, labyrinthine experience provided by a master of the American avant-garde and an historical artifact that is nevertheless piercingly contemporary." -- Doug Cummings, FILM JOURNEY

"With a running time of 6 hours and 42 minutes, ''Star Spangled to Death'' is the magnum opus of the independent filmmaker Ken Jacobs. Begun in 1957 as a backyard bohemian romp starring the avant-garde legend Jack Smith -- an amazing proto-drag performer who later directed his own underground classic, ''Flaming Creatures'' -- the project grew over the years to incorporate huge chunks of appropriated material, including, for example, the entirety of Richard M. Nixon's 1952 Checkers speech and what seems like most of an early 30's documentary on what was then known as ''darkest Africa." -- Dave Kehr, NEW YORK TIMES

"Finished—or perhaps abandoned—after nearly half a century of work, Ken Jacobs's monumental, monstrous Star Spangled to Death receives its first ever theatrical run this week at Anthology Film Archives. The movie is a six-hour assemblage of found audio-visual material ranging from political campaign films to animated cartoons to children's phonograph records, interwoven with gloriously eccentric original footage shot mainly on the streets (and in the dumps) of late-'50s New York." -- Jim Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE