Two Wrenching Departures

This film was originally part of Jacobs’ so-called Nervous System performances and was first screened in 1990. The Nervous System performances made use of two projectors and the necessary 3-D and other optical effects and were by definition unique and once-only thanks to the improvisations of the operator Ken Jacobs himself.
In 1989, two of his friends died in quick succession (albeit alienated from each other): Bob Fleischner, film maker and founder of the Collective for Living Cinema, and Jack Smith, the most legendary of all New York avant-garde film makers. Jacobs had especially worked very closely with Smith and thanks to their cooperation he had a treasure trove of film material by the two artists. Two Wrenching Departures provides insight into the early years of the New York new cinema in a way that makes the visual opulence and whimsicality of it tangible. Visual vibrations from a cosmic time.
Jacobs has worked in recent years as the digital librarian of his own film performances that were legendary thanks to the surprising quality of the often one-off work that most people, even connoisseurs of the New York avant-garde, only know from standard works or second-hand. The digital versions not only make these films accessible, they keep them accessible. That is Cinema Regained. The present version premiered in 2006 in the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). (GjZ)