Ken Jacobs

Ken Jacobs, the iconoclastic avant-garde filmmaker whose restless experiments with found footage, depth, and perception shaped generations of moving-image artists, died on October 5, 2025, at a hospital in New York City. He was 92. His son, the filmmaker Azazel Jacobs, confirmed the death and said the cause was kidney failure.

Born May 25, 1933, in New York City, Jacobs came of age in Brooklyn and began as a painter before turning to film in the 1950s. He studied with abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann and soon embedded himself in the underground scene that would define postwar American experimental cinema.

Jacobs's breakthrough, "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son," re-photographed, rigorously analyzed, and transformed a 1905 short. It became a landmark in structural film and a touchstone for artists and scholars. The United States Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2007, recognizing its cultural and aesthetic significance.

Over seven decades he pursued a bracing inquiry into how images move-and how they move us. The nearly seven-hour "Star Spangled to Death," assembled from material he began collecting in the 1950s, stands as a caustic, monumental collage of American myths and realities. MoMA and other institutions have highlighted the film's scope and long gestation.

A generative force in the classroom as well as the screening room, Jacobs co-built the cinema program at what is now Binghamton University, joining the faculty in 1969 and teaching there into the 2000s, ultimately as a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Cinema.

Jacobs also helped found and lead New York's Millennium Film Workshop in the 1960s, creating an open, low-cost hub for equipment, classes, and exhibition that expanded access to filmmaking.

Honors included the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award for independent filmmaking (1994) and a United States Artists Fellowship (2014).

Jacobs married the artist and producer Florence "Flo" Karpf Jacobs, his longtime collaborator and indispensable creative partner. Flo died in June 2025, as noted by Anthology Film Archives in a memorial tribute recognizing her central role in their shared body of work.

In addition to Azazel, survivors include their daughter, the artist Nisi Ariana Jacobs. Both children have spoken publicly about growing up inside their parents' world of images and ideas.

By Legacy News Staff

(Image: Jesse Grant/WireImage)