
Ken Jacobs
Known for: Directing
Born: May 25, 1933
Died: October 5, 2025
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 Ginsb…
Known for

Blonde Cobra
1963
Shorts From the Underground
2002

Quartet Number One
1991

Horizons
1973

Nervous Ken
2003

The Eternal Courtship
2013

Ken Jacobs - from Orchard Street to the Museum of Modern Art
2023

Up the Illusion
2023
Flo and Ken Jacobs
2001

Scotch Tape
1962

Cyclopean 3D: Life with a Beautiful Woman
2011

Momma's Man
2008

Lavender
2010

Huge Pupils
1968

Lost, Lost, Lost
1976

Emma's Dilemma
2012

Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
2011
Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
2022

Cinematic Correspondences: Jonas Mekas - J.L. Guerin
2011

Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
2010

Star Spangled to Death
2004

Jonas in the Desert
1994

Fragments of Paradise
2022

As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
2000

Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
1973

Sleepless Nights Stories
2011

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
2007

Bill's Hat
1967

365 Day Project
2007

What Is Cinema?
2013

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
1986

Art-House America: Austin Film Society
2023

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
2025

Home Movies 1971-81
1985

Birth of a Nation
1997

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1968