Ken Jacobs (1933-2025)
Briefly

Ken Jacobs (1933-2025)
"Ken Jacobs was born in Brooklyn on May 25, 1933, to divorced parents. His mother, an artist, died when he was seven, leaving his father, a former minor league baseball player, to raise him. Jacobs graduated from the City University of New York and, following a two-year stint in the Coast Guard, briefly studied painting under Hans Hofmann. A frequent attendee of Cinema 16, which regularly showed avant-garde works, he turned his Modernist-trained eye toward creating what he would describe as 'Abstract Expressionist cinema.'"
"His Star Spangled to Death, a nearly seven-hour film that took him forty-seven years to make, is considered to be a masterpiece of the genre, as are shorter works, such as Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Venus, and Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son, the last of which represents a pinnacle in the world of avant-garde film."
Ken Jacobs, born May 25, 1933, in Brooklyn, died of kidney failure on October 5 in New York at age ninety-two. He pioneered the use of found footage, splicing and manipulating archival material to produce provocative, disorienting film-performances. Major works include the nearly seven-hour Star Spangled to Death, which took forty-seven years to assemble, and shorter films such as Little Stabs at Happiness, Blonde Venus, and Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son. Jacobs co-founded the New York Film-Makers' Co-Operative and served as the inaugural director of the Millennium Film Workshop, institutions that continue to support avant-garde filmmakers.
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