An examination of the history of the U.S. through archival footage and contrasting views of society, incorporating audiovisual material ranging from political campaign films to animated cartoons to children’s phonograph records, featuring Al Jolson, Mickey Mouse, the young Jack Smith, and a half-dozen American presidents.

Little Stabs at Happiness is a collection of silent shorts Jacobs shot from the period of 1959-1963. Jaunty tunes (and a somber reflection) accompany the footage.

Avant-garde master Ken Jacobs' dizzying digital reinvention of a 1903 Edison "actuality" stretches and bends the one-minute film to an incredible, almost hallucinogenic ninety-three, combining period stereoscopic slides to create a fascinating play of depth and 2- and 3-dimensionality, narrative and scintillating spectacle.

This short film documents the daily life of the goings-on on Orchard Street, a commercial street in the Lower East Side New York City.

In Capitalism: Slavery, Jacobs uses a Victorian stereograph (a double-photograph) of slaves picking cotton under the watchful eye of a white overseer as the source for this wrenching silent work. Through digital manipulation, Jacobs creates a haunting illusion of depth and movement. It is as if he has "entered" the image and reactivate...