RPM Fest Presents "Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son" and others Films by Ken Jacobs

RPM Fest and the Brattle Theatre present a tribute to experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs and his longtime partner and collaborator, Florence “Flo” Jacobs. The program centers on Jacobs’s landmark structural film *Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son*, which reworks a 1905 Biograph short through re-photography and detailed manipulation of the original footage, revealing its textures, movement, spatial depth, and performers in newly unsettling ways.

The screening also honors the Jacobses’ decades of adventurous filmmaking, live cinema, shadow-play performances, and experiments with projection, perception, and the material qualities of film. Their work is celebrated for challenging conventional ideas about how moving images should be seen and experienced.

When: Sunday, November 8

Showtimes: 1:00 pm

Run time: 152 minutes

Program: *Perfect Film* (1986, 22 minutes, 16mm); *Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son* (1969, 115 minutes, 16mm); and *Little Stabs at Happiness* (1962, 15 minutes, 16mm)

Featured film: *Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son* expands and transforms a 1905 silent film, presenting its original images again through Jacobs’s altered visual perspective. The work highlights the gestures of the early performers and concludes with a symphonic, elegiac coda featuring white leader and a visible splice.

Artists: Ken Jacobs (1933–2025) and Florence “Flo” Jacobs (1941–2025)

Background: Ken Jacobs was an influential avant-garde filmmaker and professor at SUNY Binghamton whose work includes *Blonde Cobra*, *Star Spangled to Death*, and a substantial body of experimental digital video. Beginning in the mid-1960s, he and Florence Jacobs also developed live-cinema and shadow-play performances using double projection, a “nervous system,” and a “nervous magic lantern” to create immersive, unpredictable spectacles.

Tickets: Price not available

Passes: Brattle Passes accepted

Venue: Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

Presented by: Revolutions per Minute Festival and the Brattle Theatre

Festival information: RPM Fest focuses on short-form poetic, personal, and experimental films, along with essay films, animation, documentaries, video, and audiovisual performance. It is co-hosted by the UMass-Boston Art and Art History Department and Cinema Studies, the Brattle Theatre, and Harvard FAS CAMLab.