Kenneth Martin Jacobs (May 25, 1933 – October 5, 2025) was an American experimental filmmaker. His style often involved the use of found footage which he edited and manipulated. He also directed films using his own footage.

Ken Jacobs was born in Brooklyn on May 25, 1933. He directed Blonde Cobra in 1963. This short film stars Jack Smith who directed his own Flaming Creatures the same year. In 1969 he directed Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son (1969, USA), in which he took the original 1905 short film and manipulated the footage to recontextualize it. This is considered an important first example of deconstruction in film. The film was admitted to the National Film Registry in 2007. His Star Spangled to Death (2004, USA) is a nearly seven-hour film consisting largely of found footage. Jacobs began compiling the archival footage in 1957 and the film took 47 years to complete.

Jacobs taught at the Cinema Department at Harpur College at Binghamton University from 1969 to 2002.

In the 1990s, Jacobs began working with John Zorn and experimented with a stroboscopic effect, digital video, and 3D effects. Jacobs died from kidney failure in Manhattan, New York, on October 5, 2025, at the age of 92. His wife and frequent collaborator, Flo, died in June of the same year.

	
BOOK OF ETERNALISMS 40.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	12 min 53 s
Size: 	395 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	29.970 fps
Bit rate: 	4 281 kb/s
BPP: 	0.069
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 2 274 b/s

https://nitro.download/view/8C70A9835359037/BOOK_OF_ETERNALISMS_40.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/C64422EA7D1DF00/BOOK_OF_ETERNALISMS_41.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/D15C730BF9F967E/BOOK_OF_ETERNALISMS_42.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/2AD690A827BBA6A/BOOK_OF_ETERNALISMS_43.mkv

Language(s):No dialogue
Subtitles:None

The post Ken Jacobs – Book of Eternalisms 40-43 (2025) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Experimental short film.

Tourists of The Familiar 52_(2024)_Ken Jacobs_1080p.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	17 min 14 s
Size: 	590 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	30.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 595 kb/s
BPP: 	0.074
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/5474A1F967A5648/Tourists_of_The_Familiar_52_(2024)_Ken_Jacobs_1080p.mkv

Language(s):No dialogue
Subtitles:None

The post Ken Jacobs – Tourists of The Familiar 52 (2024) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Experimental short film directed in 2024 by Ken Jacobs.

Tourist of the Familiar 28_(2024)_Ken Jacobs_1080p.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	17 min 14 s
Size: 	604 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	30.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 706 kb/s
BPP: 	0.076
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/7E488A8D59B39C1/Tourist_of_the_Familiar_28_(2024)_Ken_Jacobs_1080p.mkv

Language(s):No dialogue
Subtitles:None

The post Ken Jacobs – Tourist of the Familiar 28 (2024) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Based on a performance piece from the 1980s with his wife, Jacobs has transformed the physical performance into a 3D, phantasmagorical feature-length film using his eternalism technique. An open exploration of sexuality, using sexual elements to begin a dialogue relating to the depth of movement.

(note: film starts at 01:15)

1.48GB | 1h 25mn | 960×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/B54DB1059ADB58E/XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX.mkv

Language:None
Subtitles:Hardcoded Spanish for the introduction

The post Ken Jacobs – XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX (2021) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

THE GEORGETOWN LOOP
(Ken Jacobs, 1996, 11m, widescreen 35mm film, black and white, silent)

Originally photographed in 1903, US Library of Congress collection. New arrangement in 1996 by Ken Jacobs, assisted by Florence Jacobs. 35mm optical rephotography by Sam Bush, Western Cine, Denver.

I’ve been raiding the Paper Print Collection of the Library Of Congress in Washington, DC, since the late 1960s with TOM, TOM, THE PIPER’S SON. It’s a preserve of early cinema. Until 1912, in order to copyright film, one deposited with the library a positive from the negative printed on paper, unprojectable, but – unlike nitrate prints – capable of weathering the years without Crumbling into chemical volatility. And there the stacks rested, safely out of mind, hundreds and hundreds of silent rolls most less than 30 meters, many Edisons, American Mutoscope And Biograph, Gaumont, Lubin, Vitagraph ; cine-snatches of life as it was lived, vaudevillians, proto-dramas, and too many state parades. Until they were ripe for rediscovery and reevaluation, and rephotography back onto film. THE GEORGETOWN LOOP is my 11-minute riff on “The Scenic Wonder Of Colorado”, a rail-line built in the 1870s through daunting mountain terrain to serve the silver mining industry. I’ve called it the first landscape film deserving of an X-rating, and that it is, yet its secret subtitle is – I must whisper – (Celestial Railway).

(Ken Jacobs)

“Elegantly reworking some 1906 footage of a train trip through the Colorado Rockies, the dean of radical filmmaking printed the original image and its mirror side by side to produce a stunning widescreen kaleidoscope effect. Did it really take 100 years of cinema for someone to execute this almost ridiculously simple idea ? “This landscape film deserves an X-rating”, says Jacobs.”

(Jim Hoberman, Village Voice, 1996)

261MB | 10m 36s | 1024×388 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/867B9311BA26AEB/The.Georgetown.Loop.1996.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language(s):Silent (English titles)
Subtitles:None

The post Ken Jacobs – The Georgetown Loop (1996) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A Tom Tom Chaser is Jacobs’ 2002 poetic riff on the transformation of his classic film Tom Tom the Piper’s Son from chemical to electronic form during the telecine process.

235MB | 10m 30s | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D7E0852808DB51B/A.Tom.Tom.Chaser.2002.576p.BluRay.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):Silent
Subtitles:None

The post Ken Jacobs – A Tom, Tom Chaser (2002) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
“Jolting in every sense of the word, this short masterwork flickers between stereographic cards depicting Victorian-era child laborers, creating a portrait of standardized horrors, endlessly reproduced.” —MoMA

334MB | 13m 44s | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/18E393723E8EE55/Capitalism.Child.Labor.2006.576p.BluRay.x264-KG.mkv

Language(s):English (titles)
Subtitles:None

The post Ken Jacobs – Capitalism: Child Labor (2006) first appeared on Cinema of the World.