Living Archive, Living Cinema Symposium

Ken and Flo Jacobs


The Brakhage Center for Media Arts Presents

Living Archive, Living Cinema:
Processing the Work of Ken and Flo Jacobs  


A Symposium
October 5-6, 2023  
Free and open to the public


Presented in collaboration with, and cosponsored by, the University Libraries, with additional support from the Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts, the Program in Jewish Studies, the William H. Donner Foundation and the Roser Visiting Artist Program at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Organized by Hanna Rose Shell (Faculty Director of the Brakhage Center and Associate Professor of Art & Art History and Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts) and Jamie Marie Wagner (Moving Image Archivist, Rare and Distinctive Collections, University Libraries)


Schedule of Public Events

Thursday, October 5th

11:00 AM-1:00 PM

Lunchtime screening: Keeping an Eye on Stan (Ken Jacobs, 2003)
Brakhage Center for Media Arts, ATLAS 311

4:00-5:30 PM

Opening Reception and Exhibition

Center for British and Irish Studies, Norlin Library M549  

7:00-9:00 PM

Momma's Man (Azazel Jacobs, 2008).
Director Azazel Jacobs in person with Q&A

ATLAS 100

Friday, October 6th

9:30-10:00 AM

Coffee and opening remarks

ATLAS 100  

10:00-11:00 AM

Processing the Work of Ken and Flo Jacobs: A Panel Discussion 
With Azazel Jacobs (Visiting Filmmaker), Andrew Lampert (Independent Archivist/Curator), Josh Siegel* (Curator, Department of Film, Museum of Modern Art), and Jamie Marie Wagner (Moving Image Archivist, Boulder)
*Josh Siegel will be participating remotely

ATLAS 100

11:00-11:30 AM

Experiments in the Archive
Hanna Rose Shell (Brakhage Center for Media Arts) and Sierra Grove (MFA Student in Film, Boulder)

ATLAS 100

1:00-1:50 PM 

How To Up The Illusion: Working with Ken and Flo Jacobs
Andrew Lampert (Independent Archivist/Curator)

ATLAS 102 

2:00-4:50 PM

Ken Jacobs in the Archive: Perfect Films/Imperfect Films
Presentation, and curated screening of Ken Jacobs films by Tom Gunning (University of Chicago)

ATLAS 102

7:00-9:00 PM

Urban Peasants (Ken Jacobs, 1975) + Sky Socialist (Ken Jacobs, 1968)

ATLAS 102 

Symposium Speakers

Sierra Grove

Sierra Grove is an artist working in experimental film, performance, and photographic processes. They are a current graduate student at University of Colorado at Boulder, working with the Moving Image Archive and teaching Photography. Originally from Spokane, Washington and graduating from Evergreen State College in Olympia with a BA in Visual Art, they have shown work regionally around the Pacific Northwest and in the Colorado area as well.

Sierra Grove

Tom Gunning

Tom Gunning is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Cinema and Media at the University of Chicago. He received his PhD from New York University, and his dissertation received the Society for Cinema Studies best dissertation prize. He taught at Chicago for nearly two decades with many Visiting Professor appointments. He is the author of D.W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film (University of Illinois Press, 1986) and The Films of Fritz Lang; Allegories of Vision and Modernity (British Film Institute, 2000), as well as over hundred and fifty articles on early cinema, film history and theory, avant-garde film, film genre, and cinema and modernism. 

Tom Gunning

Azazel Jacobs

Azazel Jacobs Son of avant-garde filmmaker/artist Ken & Florence Jacobs, Azazel was raised in New York City surrounded by important and innovative artists.  He received his bachelor’s degree in film from SUNY Purchase and his master’s degree from the American Film Institute. His features include “Momma’s Man”, which starred both his parents along with the loft he was raised in, Terri (11), The Lovers (17), and French Exit (20). His latest film "His Three Daughters”, recently premiered to high acclaim at the Toronto Int. Film Festival.

Azazel Jacobs

Andrew Lampert

Andrew Lampert is an artist, archivist and writer whose eclectic moving image and performance work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou, J. Paul Getty Museum, and Guggenheim Museum, among many other venues. Formerly the Curator of Collections at Anthology Film Archives, Lampert has restored well over 300 seminal artist films and videos, and programmed hundreds of film screenings. He has written and edited numerous books on artists including Tony Conrad, George Kuchar, Manuel DeLanda, and Harry Smith. As a curator, Lampert has organized numerous exhibitions, including Attention Line in 2022 at Artist Space in New York City, and the current exhibit Ken Jacobs: Up The Illusion at the Broadway Windows space of NYU's 80WSE Gallery. He teaches at NY City College. 

Andrew Lampert

Hanna Rose Shell

Hanna Rose Shell is Director of the Stan Brakhage Center for the Media Arts,  as well as Associate Professor of Critical and Curatorial Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She is jointly appointed in both the Department of Art and  Art History, and the Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts. Shell is also a core faculty member of the Committee on the History and Philosophy of Science, and a faculty affiliate of the Department of History and the Program in Intermedia, Writing, and Performance. She has published monographs with Zone Books and University of Chicago and written extensively  She is an author, programmer, and artist, whose award-winning works have shown at venues including The Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, the ZKM Center for Art and Media, Machine Project, Slamdance, as well as throughout Europe and Asia. Her most recent book is Shoddy: From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags and current projects include a curatorial project about Jewish heritage and American avant-garde cinema, and an experimental documentary Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds.

Hanna Rose Shell

Josh Siegel

Josh Siegel, Curator in MoMA’s Department of Film, has organized more than 150 film, media, and gallery exhibitions, and has acquired more than 1,000 films and media installations for MoMA’s collection, including major collections of Frederick Wiseman, Jack Smith, Errol Morris, and Ingmar Bergman. He serves on the selection committees of the annual festivals New Directors/New Films and Doc Fortnight and is the founding director of To Save and Project: The MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. Siegel has lectured widely, including at Yale University, Columbia University, and Pixar; has served on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, CalArts, Harvard University, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; and has been a jury member at many international film festivals, including Venice, Torino, and Vancouver. He serves on the executive boards of MacDowell, Light Industry, Cinema Tropical, and the Maurice Sendak Foundation. His publications include Frederick Wiseman and Modern Contemporary: Art at MoMA since 1980; Baby, It’s Cold Outside: A History of Finnish Cinema;  and The Łodź Film School of Poland: 50 Years.  

Josh Siegel

Jamie Marie Wagner

Jamie Marie Wagner has been the Moving Image Archivist in the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries since 2019. She oversees moving image film and video materials in the Libraries’ Rare and Distinctive Collections, as well as paper collections related to American experimental filmmaking and media history. She has an MA in Film and MLS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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