The retrospective Seeing Through Film celebrates the work and lives of Ken and Flo Jacobs, who both passed away in 2025. One of the American avant-garde’s most prolific figures, Ken Jacobs (1933-2025) and his wife and lifelong collaborator Flo Jacobs (1941-2025) were an integral part of the New York alternative film scene. 

A programme of Jacobs’ early collaborations with Jack Smith. 
 
Little Stabs At Happiness, USA 1960, 15 mins, 16mm 
 Jacobs completed the influential Little Stabs At Happiness (1958-60) using the pseudonym K.M. Rosenthal (“to protect my obscurity”). A series of whimsical 100-foot rolls, presented as they came out of the camera, which feature impromptu performances by Jack Smith, Jerry Sims and others in the streets of New York.  

“Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100′ rolls were used, the timings fitted well with music on old 78’s. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialised with dramatics. Whimsy was our achievement. And breaking out of step.” (Ken Jacobs) 
 
Blonde Cobra, USA 1963, 33 mins, 16mm
Assembled from audio of Smith that Jacobs recorded, and unfinished footage shot by Bob Fleischner, Blonde Cobra stands as one of the great documents of Jack Smith as a performer. Jonas Mekas, who was arrested with Ken and Flo Jacobs for screening Smith’s Flaming Creatures in 1964, described it as the masterpiece of “Baudelairean cinema”.  

“Blonde Cobra is an erratic narrative – no, not really a narrative, it’s only stretched out in time for convenience of delivery. It’s a look in on an exploding life, on a man of imagination suffering pre-fashionable Lower East Side deprivation and consumed with American 1950’s, 40’s, 30’s disgust. Silly, self-pitying, guilt-strictured and yet triumphing.” (Ken Jacobs)  
 
The Whirled, USA 1961/2007, 19 mins 
The Whirled is comprised of four short films: Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice (1956); Little Cobra Dance (1956); Hunch Your Back (1963), which features footage of Jacobs and Carolee Schneemann appearing on a daytime quiz show; and Death of P'Town (1961). 
 
“The first two sections were shot around Jack's loft on Reade Street on two 100' 16 mm rolls. Sunday morning, following Saturday's sacrifice, I saw there was another 50 feet left. In an impromptu way, very different from my initial fastidious art-film approach, I quickly filmed Jack on the roof alongside his loft. The results had us falling onto the floor and I would never be an art-film true-believer again. After years of shooting my raging epic STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH starring Jack as The Spirit Not of Life But of Living, and after a few months of being on the outs with each other, we got together – summer of '61 in Provincetown – for one last stab at friendship and the making of a film. In 1963, a snatch of Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice was shown on TV. I had somehow been invited to participate in a TV quiz program called Back Your Hunch. (Or was it Hunch Your Back?)” (Ken Jacobs)