From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Mar 11 2009 - 05:40:55 PDT
Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Return to LH6
Curated by Ken Jacobs
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at 7:30pm
"Binghamton, 1969 to 2002. I started in LH1, a much larger room than LH6,
hundreds of students but most expected to see only popular movies and a
reflection of their own casual and superior attitudes. They weren't the only
defiantly stupid ones (seeing that nothing is more worth critical attention
than the phenomena of cinema). Established teachers had railed against a
Cinema Department before I arrived as a further appeasement of spoiled and
rebellious students and a desecration of the discipline of teaching. They
had gone off-campus to complain to the American Legion and Veterans of
Foreign Wars, turds that supported the slaughter of Vietnamese and decried
the influx of NewYorkCommieFagNiggerlovingJews, and allies in the protection
of students from persons arrested for the screening of Flaming Creatures.
"I then believed that anyone could become a real student (wrong!), just as I
was an anyone that had become a teacher. I had prepared by attending The
Laff Movie on 42nd Street. It had first influenced my making of Star
Spangled to Death and now my teaching. I can't recall the advertising of
specific films on the marquee. It was a place for poor men to sleep off a
drunk while old comedies were screened, sometimes entire films and sometimes
comic sections of films. Film clips! This was indeed revolutionary thinking.
One standard applied: whatever was selected had been thoroughly dismissed
from public memory, certainly from the few film-history books that then
existed. The great nameless and unthanked anti-snob curator of The Laff
Movie, my mystery Professor! Thou scummy and dreary University, where hot
dogs and candy bars and drinks were hawked up and down the aisles during
screenings, only you, for a quarter, showed me the pre-code Thirties,
introducing me to the real Eddy Cantor and Jimmy Durante and Busby Berkeley
in their pre-code prime, when they were forces.
"I expanded on the Laff Movie selections so one never knew what to expect
and I disapproved of introductions: students were expected to grapple, and
then there'd be talk, lots of it. Assuming I still have something of my
teaching chops, you're welcome to sit in on a re-creation of cinema studies
in LH6. (I would sometimes screen some of my own stuff so there just might
be samplings and discussion of recent Ken Jacobs work.)" - KJ
Followed by a conversation between Jacobs and Amy Taubin.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Ken Jacobs, was born in Brooklyn, NY, in
1933. He studied painting with one of the prime creators of Abstract
Expressionism, Hans Hofmann, in the mid-fifties. It was then that he also
began filmmaking (Star Spangled To Death). His personal star rose, to just
about knee high, with the sixties advent of Underground Film. In 1967, with
the involvement of his wife Florence and many others aspiring to a
democratic -rather than demagogic- cinema, he created The Millennium Film
Workshop in New York City. A nonprofit filmmaker's co-operative open to all,
it made available film equipment, workspace, screenings and classes at
little or no cost. Later he found himself teaching large classes of
painfully docile students at St. John's University in Jamaica, Queens.
In 1969, after a week's guest seminar at Harpur College (now, Binghamton
University), students petitioned the Administration to hire Ken Jacobs.
Despite his lack of a high school diploma, the Administration -during that
special period of anguish and possibility- decided that, as a teacher, he
was "a natural." Together with Larry Gottheim he organized the SUNY system's
first Department of Cinema, teaching thoughtful consideration of every kind
of film but specializing in avant garde cinema appreciation and production.
(Department graduates are world-recognized as having an exceptional presence
in this field.) His own early studies under Hofmann would increasingly
figure in his filmwork, making for an Abstract Expressionist cinema, clearly
evident in his avant garde classic Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son (1969) and
increasingly so in his subsequent devising of the unique Nervous System
series of live film-projection performances. The American Museum Of The
Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, hosted a full retrospective of his work in
1989, The New York Museum Of Modern Art held a partial retrospective in
1996, as did The American House in Paris in 1994 and the Arsenal Theater in
Berlin in 1986 (during his 6 month stay as guest-recipient of Berlin's DAAD
award). He has also performed in Japan, at the Louvre in Paris, the Getty
Center in Los Angeles, etc. Honors include the Maya Deren Award of The
American Film Institute, the Guggenheim Award and a special Rockefeller
Foundation grant. A 1999 interview with Ken Jacobs can be seen on the Net as
part of The University Of California at Berkeley's series of Conversations
With History.
Tickets - $7, available at door.
About Light Industry
Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New
York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has
begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized
by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry
draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in
New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid
film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and
lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of
time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of
artists and audiences within the city.
About Industry City
Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a
cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a
regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square
feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now
includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at
competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost
studios for artists in need of reasonably priced space. This program was
conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New
York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial
redevelopment--one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents
or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that
integrates cultural and industrial production. For more information:
http://www.industrycityartproject.org
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.