Optic Antics The Cinema of Ken Jacobs

This volume gathers many of the best known writers on the avant-garde from three continents to write on the cinema of Ken Jacobs, who -- with Jonas Mekas -- is arguably the most important living experimental filmmaker. Jacobs is perhaps best known for his extraordinary, dual-projector Nervous System performances, but his vast output includes shadow plays, multimedia performance films, videos, and, for the last twenty years, the perception-expanding Nervous Magic Lantern. Though he is included in the Whitney Museum's list of the hundred greatest artists of the twentieth century, and his filmTom, Tom, The Piper's Son(1969-71) was recently added to the Library of Congress' national film registry, there is little scholarly material on Jacobs which is readily available to researchers. The scholars contributing are Paul Arthur, Nicole Brenez, David E. James, Branden W. Joseph, Scott MacDonald, Adrian Martin, Michele Pierson, Tony Pipolo, William Rose, Eivind R#xF8;ssak, Amy Taubin, Federico Windhausen, and Michael Zryd. Shorter essays by internationally renowned artists who have been influenced by Jacobs include Abigail Child, Richard Foreman, Christoph Girardet and Matthias M#xFC;ller, Larry Gottheim, Lewis Klahr, Jonas Mekas, Phil Solomon, Art Spiegelman, and Fred Worden.

Michele Pierson is on the faculty of the Film Studies Department at King's College London. She is the author of Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder.

David E. James is on the faculty of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties and The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles.

Paul Arthur was Professor of English and Film Studies at Montclair State University. He is the author of Line Of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965.

1. Introduction: Ken Jacobs-A Half-Century of Cinema, Michele Pierson
2. "A Panorama Compounded of Great Human Suffering and Ecstatic Filmic Representation": Texts On Ken Jacobs, Paul Arthur
3. Texts On Ken Jacobs, Jonas Mekas
4. A Mischievous Little-Boy Revolution: The Whirled, Branden Joseph
5. Ken Jacobs, Moralist, Richard Foreman
6. The Sky Socialist: Film as an Instrument of Thought, Cinema as an Augury of Redemption, David E. James
7. Bigger Than Life: Between Ken Jacobs and Nicholas Ray, Larry Gottheim
8. Acts of Delay: The Play between Stillness and Motion in Tom, Tom the Piper's Son, Eivind Røssaak
9. The Piper's Son: Content and Performance in the Films of Ken Jacobs, Abigail Child
10. Ken Jacobs' Two Wrenching Departures, Tony Pipolo
11. Photo Essay, Flo Jacobs
12. Flo Talks, Amy Taubin
13. Recycling, Visual Study, Expanded Theory - Ken Jacobs, Theorist, or: The Long Song of the Sons, Nicole Brenez
14. "Avant-Garde" Filmmaker: Ken Jacobs, Art Spiegelman
15. Ken Jacobs and the Robert Flaherty Seminar, Scott MacDonald
16. Nervous Ken: XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX and after, Phil Solomon
17. Jacobs' Bergsonism, Michele Pierson
18. Ken Jacobs and Ecstatic Abstraction, Lewis Klahr
19. Busby Berkeley, Ken Jacobs: A Precarious, Extravagant, Populist, and Constructivist Cinema, Adrian Martin
20. Untitled (for Ken), Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller
21. Theories of Moving Pictures: Ken Jacobs after Hans Hofmann, Federico Windhausen
22. I Owe Ken Jacobs, Fred Worden
23. Professor Ken, Michael Zryd
24. Annotated Filmography and Performance History, William Rose
25. Bibliography