“Jacobs made movies that changed your ideas about what cinema is and could be. He expanded your sense of the art and your horizons, lit up your brain and blew your mind.”
— Manohla Dargis, “The Strangely Beautiful Realities You Can Discover in a Ken Jacobs Film,” The New York Times, October 7, 2025
Sean Malin — “Ken Jacobs, Visionary Experimental Filmmaker, Is Dead at 92,” The New York Times, October 6, 2025
The NYT news obituary (companion to Dargis’s appraisal above). No link.
Artforum — “Ken Jacobs (1933–2025),” October 2025
Full-career obituary: Film-Makers’ Co-op, Millennium Film Workshop, Blonde Cobra, Tom Tom, Star Spangled to Death; includes Jonas Mekas’s Village Voice line on Blonde Cobra and Ken’s Millennium Film Journal tribute to Flo.
Read more: https://www.artforum.com/news/ken-jacobs-dies-19332025-1234736542/
Vadim Rizov — Filmmaker Magazine, October 2025
Personal remembrance, drawing on J. Hoberman’s Kino Lorber essay (Hans Hofmann, push/pull, socialism).
Read more: https://filmmakermagazine.com/132155-obituary-ken-jacobs-1933-2025/
Variety — Pat Saperstein, October 2025
Carries Azazel Jacobs’s statement and Film at Lincoln Center’s “titan of American experimental cinema.”
Read more: https://variety.com/2025/film/news/ken-jacobs-dead-experimental-film-1236541528/
Deadline, October 2025
Read more: https://deadline.com/2025/10/ken-jacobs-dead-avant-garde-filmmaker-1236571803/
Cinemasters — “Remembering Filmmaker Ken Jacobs,” October 2025
Read more: https://www.cinemasters.net/post/remembering-filmmaker-ken-jacobs-1933-2025
William Rose — “Ken Jacobs obituary: giant of the American avant-garde working at the limits of perception,” BFI, October 23, 2025
Read more: https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/ken-jacobs-obituary
Lukas Brasiskis — “Eternalisms of the Nervous System: Ken Jacobs (1933–2025),” e-flux Notes, October 15, 2025
Read more: https://www.e-flux.com/notes/6783406/eternalisms-of-the-nervous-system-ken-jacobs-1933-2025
David Hudson — “Ken Jacobs’s Optic Antics,” The Criterion Collection, October 8, 2025
Survey of tributes, gathering Taubin, Strub, Yue, Michelson, and Azazel Jacobs on the work.
Read more: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8948-ken-jacobs-s-optic-antics
ARTnews — “Ken Jacobs, Underground Film Legend, Dies at 92,” October 2025
Read more: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/ken-jacobs-film-artist-dead-1234755856/
R. Emmet Sweeney — “A Wrenching Departure: Ken Jacobs,” October 23, 2025
On Jacobs as teacher at SUNY Binghamton and the Kino Lorber Blu-ray project; includes Jonas Mekas on Star Spangled to Death.
Read more: https://oldnew.substack.com/p/a-wrenching-departure-ken-jacobs
Gartenberg Media Enterprises — “Ken Jacobs (1933–2025),” October 14, 2025
Read more: https://www.gartenbergmedia.com/news/2025/10/14/ken-jacobs-in-memoriam
The Film-Makers’ Cooperative — tribute, October 2025
Tribute posted to the Cooperative’s Facebook; no page on their own site.
Criterion — “P. Adams Sitney, Flo Jacobs, and the Avant-garde,” June 2025
On Flo’s role, the “Flo Talks!” interview in Optic Antics, and Momma’s Man.
Read more: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/8829-p-adams-sitney-flo-jacobs-and-the-avant-garde
Anthology Film Archives — tribute to Flo Jacobs and P. Adams Sitney, June 2025
Anthology’s memorial to Flo and Sitney, who died the same week.
Read more: https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/about/sitney_flo
2026
J. Hoberman — “Ken Jacobs (1933–2025),” Artforum, January 2026 (Vol. 64, No. 5)
The print-issue obituary, distinct from the October news item above.
Read more: https://www.artforum.com/columns/ken-jacobs-obituary-j-hoberman-1234740603/
Brian Karl — “Analytic Projector: The Nervous Systems of Ken Jacobs,” The Brooklyn Rail, February 2026
Read more: https://brooklynrail.org/2026/02/film/analytic-projector-the-nervous-systems-of-ken-jacobs/
J. Hoberman — “Ken Jacobs’ History of the United States,” The New York Times, April 2026
On Star Spangled to Death at MoMA and The Whole Shebang citywide retrospective.
MoMA — The Whole Shebang: Celebrating Ken & Flo Jacobs, April 2026
Curatorial text on the acquisition of over 200 works and the citywide celebration.
Read more: https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5896
Anthology Film Archives — The Whole Shebang series page, April 2026
Program text on Ken and Flo’s partnership; announces the book Ken Jacobs: I Walked Into My Shortcomings (The Visible Press).
Read more: https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/61016
Open City Documentary Festival / Barbican — “Seeing Through Film: Ken and Flo Jacobs,” London, 2026
The UK retrospective, with introductions by Mark Webber.
Read more: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2026/event/tom-tom-the-pipers-son-introduction