Lamplightings/Sunday Showcase
Two Films by Ken Jacobs

Sunday, July 20, 1 pm
Free, first come, first served

For over 60 years filmmaker Ken Jacobs has been expanding the cinematic form, transgressing the implicit boundaries of sound, the frame, and narrative. With discussion of his work included in P. Adams Sitney’s essential text Visionary Film and profiled at length by Stan Brakhage in At Wit’s End, Jacobs’s role in underground cinema is remarkably vast. This program gathers two of his essential works made in collaboration with Jack Smith (Flaming Creatures), screened here as a celebration of one of cinema’s most spanning figures and to memorialize Flo Jacobs, Ken Jacobs’s life and creative partner, who passed away this year. 1960-63, U.S., 16mm, approx. 48 minutes.

Little Stabs at Happiness
Featuring Jack Smith. Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100′ rolls timed well with music on old 78s. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy was our achievement, as well as breaking out of step. 1960, U.S, 16mm, 15 minutes.

Blonde Cobra
Jack says I made the film too heavy. It was his and Bob’s intention to create light monster-movie comedy. Two comedies, actually, two separate stories that were being shot simultaneously until they had a falling-out over who should pay for the raw stock destroyed in a fire started when Jack’s cat knocked over a candle: Jack claimed it was an act of God. 1963, U.S, 16mm, 33 minutes.