Experimental Filmmaker Ken Jacobs at REDCAT, CalArts This Week

Experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs returns to Los Angeles this week for the program Ken Jacobs, Recent Youthful Indiscretions: A 5-Part Los Angeles Residency. Curated by Steve Anker, dean of the School of Film/Video at CalArts, the residency begins at REDCAT tonight with Into The Depths of The Even Greater Depression: A Nervous Magic Lantern Performance and Jacobs will then spend two days at the CalArts campus in Valencia screening other works and working with students.

The New York-born artist is best known for directing Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son (1969, USA), an experimental feature in which he re-photographed the 1905 short of the same name. Jacobs’ film was admitted to the National Film Registry in 2007. A more recent work, Star Spangled to Death (2004, USA), is an epic film of nearly seven hours in length and comprised largely of found footage.

Jacobs was an early pioneer of paracinema in the early ’70s, referring to film experiences transformed by ways outside of standard cinema technology. For example, in his live 3-D shows, Jacobs variously manipulates a film projector’s mechanisms, painted plastic cells and sometimes objects, to summon dizzying abstractions.

So vertiginous are some of Jacobs works, there are warning labels attached for those people with epilepsy, as in the video above. (Please click here if you cannot see the video.)

Here’s the schedule for Jacobs’ 5-Part Los Angeles Residency:

Monday, Oct. 12 at 8:30 pm
REDCAT Theater
Into The Depths of The Even Greater Depression: A Nervous Magic Lantern Performance
Disorient Express (1906/1996, 30 min., 35mm, silent)
Tickets: $9 general admission; $7 with student ID; and $5 for CalArts’ students, faculty and staff

Tuesday, Oct. 13 at 7 pm
BIJOU Theater at CalArts
Recent Digital Work – I

Thursday, Oct. 15 at 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater/UCLA Film and Television Archive
Recent Digital Work – II
Tickets: $7-$9

Friday, October 16 at 4 pm
BIJOU Theater at CalArts
Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World, 2006

Sunday, Oct. 18 at 7 pm
The Egyptian Theater/L.A. Filmforum
Anaglyph Tom (Tom with Puffy Cheeks), 2009
Tickets: $10 general; $6 students/seniors; free for Filmforum members

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