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Personal Info
Known For
Directing
Birthday
May 25, 1933
Died
October 5, 2025
Place of Birth
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, USA
Also Known As
- 켄 제이콥스
Ken Jacobs
0.4 Popularity
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
0.0
Self
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
2025
0.0
Self
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
2023
0.0
Self
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
2023
🎬
0.0
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
2022
6.5
Self
Fragments of Paradise
2022
0.0
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016
6.5
Self
What Is Cinema?
2013
0.0
The Eternal Courtship
2013
1.0
Himself
Emma's Dilemma
2012
5.3
Self
Sleepless Nights Stories
2011
Credits
Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
as Self
2025
0.0
Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
as Self
2023
0.0
Art-House America: Austin Film Society
as Self
2023
0.0
🎬
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
2022
0.0
Fragments of Paradise
as Self
2022
6.5
Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016
0.0
What Is Cinema?
as Self
2013
6.5
The Eternal Courtship
2013
0.0
Emma's Dilemma
as Himself
2012
1.0
Sleepless Nights Stories
as Self
2011
5.3
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
as Himself
2011
6.7
Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
as Himself
2011
7.0
Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
as Himself
2010
5.0
Lavender
as Self
2010
0.0
Momma's Man
as Dad
2008
6.2
365 Day Project
2007
10.0
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
as Self
2007
6.6
Star Spangled to Death
as Oscar Friendly / Ringmaster / Janitor
2004
7.5
Nervous Ken
2003
0.0
🎬
Shorts From the Underground
as Self
2002
0.0
As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
as Self
2000
7.6
Birth of a Nation
as Self
1997
6.3
Jonas in the Desert
as Self
1994
5.5
Quartet Number One
1991
7.5
He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
as Self (archive footage)
1986
8.2
Home Movies 1971-81
1985
0.0
Lost, Lost, Lost
as Self
1976
7.0
Horizons
1973
8.5
Huge Pupils
as Himself
1968
0.0
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
as Self
1968
7.4
Bill's Hat
1967
0.0
Blonde Cobra
1963
2.7
Scotch Tape
1962
4.2