It’s crafted from a mix of archival footage (forgotten Disney shorts, musical clips, political commercials), New York street theater, and intertitle commentary.Īt heart, what Jacobs is doing is reinterpreting history, looking at American propaganda with a critical eye, and presenting it in such a way that each viewer will see something different. As the title implies, the film is an indictment-albeit a compelling one-of what America has become over the past half century. It’s less abstract than some of his others, but he’s still trying to alter the viewer’s perceptions. This past spring, he released Star Spangled to Death-the legendary 7-hour film he began in 1956, set aside, then picked up again a few years ago. Hoping to alter, too, the way people look at the world. Over the past 50 years, he’s crafted a body of work that focuses less on storytelling than on the mechanics of film itself-“mining,” he says, the way images on the frames interact in the hopes of revealing a hidden truth. Jacobs is one of the most lauded experimental filmmakers America has ever produced, which is quite something for a blue-collar kid from Brooklyn. A skylight shines down on a large wooden table, and a disorienting reversible mirror hangs upside-down on the wall. It’s a comfortably cluttered maze, filled with computer equipment, books, records and films. He and Flo, his wife and partner of 45 years, live in a 4th floor walkup in Lower Manhattan. Jacobs is a wiry 73, with tousled gray hair and features that betray a sharp intelligence. Having never been in existence before, I imagined when younger humans were on the brink of correcting the errors of their ways. I am disappointed, not with my personal situation -I’ve been very fortunate-but with the obscenity, that is the state of the world. “Someone told me a while ago that I was a crank,” Ken Jacobs wrote.
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