The Shorts of Ken Jacobs

Director: Ken Jacobs

1955 / 107min / 35mm

A selection of shorts from Brooklyn-born experimental filmmaker Jacobs. In Orchard Street, he documents the tradition of eager haggling and bargain hunting that once took place on the commercial thoroughfare of the title. The Whirled and Little Stabs at Happiness are both collections of smaller silent segments made between 1956 and ’63. In Blonde Cobra, dubbed “the masterpiece of Baudelairean cinema” by Jonas Mekas, Jacobs turns his camera on fellow underground icon Jack Smith. In Window, Jacobs, always interested in experiments in perception, uses his camera to contemplate the frame of a window and the exterior beyond, as he does conducting a scintillating experiment involving lenses and screens.

Presented with Q&As with Ken Jacobs