
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.

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

What Is Cinema?
2013 · as Self

Birth of a Nation
1997 · as Self

365 Day Project
2007 · as Self

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
1968 · as Self

Jonas in the Desert
1994 · as Self

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
2007 · as Self

Santos Dumont: Pré-Cineasta?
2010 · as Himself

Reminiscences of Jonas Mekas
2016

Lost, Lost, Lost
1976 · as Self

Blonde Cobra
1963

Art Spiegelman: Disaster Is My Muse
2025 · as Self

Sleepless Nights Stories
2011 · as Self

He Stands in a Desert Counting the Seconds of His Life
1986 · as Self (archive footage)

Home Movies 1971-81
1985

Please Leave a Message: Anthology Film Archives Voicemails Through the Ages
2022

Art-House America: Austin Film Society
2023 · as Self

Momma's Man
2008 · as Dad