Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives

THE WHOLE SHEBANG: CELEBRATING KEN AND FLO JACOBS

April 8 – April 25

April 8-25, 2026

“The Whole Shebang: Celebrating Ken and Flo Jacobs” is a fourteen-venue, city-wide expanded cinema(s) salute to two of experimental cinema’s most beloved icons. Ken (1933-2025) and Flo (1941-2025) were inseparable from the day they met in 1962, and while their passing last year leaves us bereft, it also provides a welcome opportunity to survey their decades worth of groundbreaking film and boldly digital work. Anthology’s contribution to this unprecedented multi-venue festival will spotlight key films we have preserved over the years alongside the theatrical premieres of late works and further surprises from their vast oeuvre.

As a heralded filmmaker, distinguished professor at SUNY Binghamton, and undeniable presence on the scene for so many decades, Ken Jacobs exerted a major impact on global cinema culture with anarchic wonders like BLONDE COBRA (1963), STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH (1956/2004) and the structuralist classic TOM, TOM, THE PIPER’S SON (1969). Beginning with FLO ROUNDS A CORNER (1999), he went on to produce a constant stream of mind-bending digital videos that, in many ways, brought him back full circle to his early days as a painter. Florence Jacobs (née Karpf) was Ken’s partner at every turn, and his prime collaborator in the trailblazing live cinema and shadow play performances that they began presenting in the mid-1960s. Whether they were reworking early film footage with the double projection “nervous system” or projecting phantasmagorical 3-D images with their “nervous magic lantern,” Ken and Flo produced unfathomable, homespun works that pushed the possibilities of film and digital cinema beyond all expectations.

Organized by Andrew Lampert, this collective salute will unfold over the month of April with screenings at L’Alliance New York, Anthology, BAM, Film-Makers’ Coop, Film at Lincoln Center, Light Industry, Metrograph, Millennium Film Workshop, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of the Moving Image, Rockaway Film Festival, Roxy Cinema, Spectacle, and UnionDocs.

With extra special thanks to Nisi Ariana, Azazel Jacobs, Diaz, Antoine Catala, and Viktor Timofeev.

The series will also coincide with the publication of the new book, “Ken Jacobs: I Walked Into My Shortcomings”, a monumental compendium of Ken Jacobs’ writings, interviews and teaching edited by William Rose. In addition to texts dating back to the 1950s, the book – which is published by The Visible Press in association with Anthology – features a detailed chronology, complete filmography, and is heavily illustrated throughout. For more info visit: www.thevisiblepress.com

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