| 1933 geboren in New York
Filmografie (Auswahl): 1956 "Orchard Street", unvollendet • 1957 •"Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice": TV Plug: Little Cobra Dance", 16 mm, 9 min • "Stars Spangled to Death", unvollendet • 1958-61 "Little Stabs at Happiness", 16 mm, Farbe, 18 min • 1959-62 "Blonde Cobra", 16 mm, Farbe, 25 min • 1961 "Death of P'Town", 16 mm, Farbe, 7 min • 1963 • Baudelarian Capers", 16 mm, sw und Farbe, 30 min, unvollendet • 1964 • The Winter Footage", 8 mm • "We Stole Away", 8 mm • 1965 "Lisa and Joey in Connecticut: You've Come Back! You're Still Here!", 8 mm • The Sky Socialist", 8 mm • "Naomi Is a Vision of Loveliness", 8 mm, Farbe, stumm • 1968 "Airshaft", 16 mm, Farbe, stumm, 4 min • "Noami Is a Dream of Loveliness", 16 mm, Farbe, Ton, 4 min • "Soft Rain", 16 mm, Farbe, stumm, 4 x 2.30 min • 1969 "Tom Tom the Piper's Son", 16 mm, sw, stumm, 86 min • "Nissan Ariana window", 16 mm, 14 min • 1971 "Globe", 16 mm, 22 min • 1973 "Excerpt from the Russian Revolution", 16 mm, 22 min • 1975 "Jerry takes a Back Seat, then Passes out of the Picture", 16 mm, 11 min • 1976 "Urban peasants", 16 mm, 40 min • 1978 "The doctor's dream", 16 mm, 25 min • 1986 "Perfect Film", 16 mm, 22 min • 1990 "Opening the 19th century 1896", 16 mm, 9 min
Cinematography assistant Jordan Meyers. Orginal 1905 film shot and probably directed by G.W. "Billy" Bitzer, rescued via a paper print filed for copyright purposes with the Library of Congress. It is most reverently examined here, absolutely loved, with a new movie, almost as a side effect, coming into being. "Ghosts" Cine Recordings of the vivacious doings of persons long dead. The preservation of their memory ceases at the edges at the frame (a 1905 hand happened to stick into the frame... it's preserved, recorded in a spray of emulsion gains). One face passes "behind" another on the two dimensional screen. The staging and cutting is pre-Griffith. Seven infinitely complex cine tapestries comprise the orginal film, and the style is not primitive, not uncinematic but the cleanest, inspired indication of a path of cinematic development whose value has only recently been discovered. My camera closes in, only to better ascertain the infinite richness (playing with fate, taking advantage of the loop character of all movies, recalling with variations some visual complexes again and again for particular savouring out incongruities in the story-telling (a person, confused suddenly looks out of an actors face), delighting in the whole bizarre human phenomena of story-telling itself and this within the fantasy of reading any bygone time out of the visual crudities of film: dream within a dream! And then I wanted to shoe the actual present of film, just begin to indicate its energy. I wanted to "bring to the surface" that multi-rhythmic collision-contesting of dark and light two-dimensional force-areas struggling edge to edge for identity of shape...to get into the amoebic gain pattern itself- a chemical dispersin pattern unique to each frame,...stirred to life by a successive 16-24 pattering on our retinas, the teaming energies elicited (the grains! the grains!) then collaborating, unknowingly and ironically to form the akways-poignant-because-always-past illusion. (London Film Makers Coop)
Jacobs zeigt einen Groteskfilm von 1905. Dann faehrt er fort, die ganze Handlung auf hoechst interessante Weise zu rekonstruieren, indem er sie auf bestimmte Weise wieder filmt. Er konzentriert sich auf Details des Originals, die er wie in Grossaufnahmen zeigt und die um so mehr abstrakt plastisch erscheinen, je weniger er vom originalen Bildausschnitt zeigt, und wenn er die Geschwindigkeit mit Stehkadern, Zeitlupe und Ruecklauf variiert. Jacobs zeigt anschliessend den Originalfilm nochmals. Bei dieser zweiten Vorfuehrung erinnert man sich an die Details und Variationen, die er uns dazwischen gezeigt hat, so dass dieselbe Aktion jetzt voll mit einer neuen plastischen Bedeutung zu sein scheint: die totale Raum-Zeit-Erfahrung wurde durch seine freie Behandlung des Originalmaterials erhoeht."
(Scheugl/Schmidt: Eine Subgeschichte des Films)
|