Return to Lecture Hall 6
Tuesday, April 7, 2026 at 7pm
Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn

Presented by J. Hoberman

Scotch Tape, Jack Smith, 1962, 16mm, 3 mins
Skeleton Dance, Ub Iwerks, 1929, digital projection, 5 mins
Blue Moses, Stan Brakhage, 1962, 16mm, 11 mins
Unsere Afrikareise, Peter Kubelka, 1966, 16mm, 13 mins
Valentin de las Sierras, Bruce Baillie, 1968, 16mm, 10 mins
Airshaft, Ken Jacobs, 1967, 16mm, 4 mins
Wait, Ernie Gehr, 1968, 16mm, 7 mins
Calling All Girls, Jean Negulesco (uncredited), 1942, 16mm, 20 mins

Although I knew Ken Jacobs by reputation and had seen at least one of his films (Little Stabs at Happiness), I first met the man in the spring of 1969 when along with his wife Flo and their two-year-old daughter Nissan Ariana, he materialized at the State University of New York-Binghamton, a/k/a Harpur College where, an indifferent lit major in my junior year, I was on academic probation. I recall a week of annotated, seemingly all-day screenings in the capacious Lecture Hall 6. The films included the mind-blowing Man with a Movie Camera, execrable Yiddish talkie Catskill Honeymoon, Busby Berkeley compilation Calling All Girls, and complete Stan Brakhage Art of Vision, presented with Ken’s voluble introductions. To say I was mesmerized was to say the least.

When, somewhat miraculously, Ken received an appointment in the newly established Film Department for the 1969-70 academic year, I took both of his two lecture courses. My attention was enhanced and grades improved—doubtless helped by the Kent State confusion, which effectively shut down classes in early May, not to mention Ken’s disinclination to assign papers or give exams. The test was my work-study job, serving as his projectionist. Ken was then working on Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son. His instrument was the Kalart-Victor analytical projector. Thus, every feature film shown in class was “tom-tommed” by fellow projectionist Michael Gersten and myself according to Ken’s exasperated (and exasperating) directives. Among those I remember: The Birth of a Nation, October, Trouble in Paradise, Bicycle Thieves, The White Sheik and above all, Nick Ray’s They Live by Night (Ken loved that movie until he met Nick). There were also films that, as projectionists for the Harpur Film Society, Michael and I brought to class: Detour, Touch of Evil, and most memorably Island of Lost Souls, which prompted Ken to nickname LH6 the House of Pain.

More relaxing were the short, avant-garde films which we simply watched with Ken. Jack Smith’s Scotch Tape, Ub Iwerk’s “Silly Symphony” Skeleton Dance, Stan Brakhage’s Blue Moses, Peter Kubelka’s Unsere Afrikereise, Bruce Baillie’s Valentin de las Sierras, Ken’s Airshaft, and Ernie Gehr’s Wait are some. These were screened multiple times as Ken talked over and after each projection or at times just let the movies speak for themselves. All classes were attended by Flo and Nisi, sitting in the front row, along with a student monitor who recorded Ken’s fantastic monologues on a reel-to-reel Wollensak. Where are those tapes now? They would be priceless and not just to me.

- JH

This screening is part of The Whole Shebang, a month-long, city-wide tribute to Ken and Flo Jacobs.

Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.

Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served, except for members subscribed at $8/month or more, who may reserve a seat by emailing information@lightindustry.org at least two hours prior to showtime. Box office opens at 6:30pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.

John Cook's I Just Can’t Go On
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 at 7pm
Light Industry, 361 Stagg Street, Suite 407, Brooklyn

I Just Can’t Go On (Ich schaff's einfach nimmer), John Cook, 1972, 16mm, 50 mins

One of the greatest Austrian filmmakers was Canadian. John Cook, born in Toronto, decamped for Vienna with his girlfriend in the late 60s after a run as a fashion photographer in Paris. Once there, he began work on I Just Can’t Go On, the first entry in what would be a brief, remarkable filmography. Though he would later make narrative films, like Headlock (Schwitzkasten, 1978, his best-known and most-celebrated movie), his documentary debut remains a vital and underappreciated instance of observational cinema. Like so many immigrants before him, he discovered views onto his adopted country that were, for most of his newfound compatriots, obscured.

The two subjects of I Just Can’t Go On were found close to home: the middle-aged cleaning woman for Cook’s building and her much younger Romani husband, an amateur boxer. Theirs is not an easy life, we come to learn—treated by employers as little more than mop bucket, buffeted by the sadistic impulses of reform school functionaries. This is the story we hear, yet not the story we see. The image and sound in the film are almost entirely non-synchronous, playing off one another in an hour-long pas de deux. Freed from the burden of simple illustration, Cook’s camera bobs and weaves through scenes of the everyday, alighting upon moments of human tenderness as surprising and forceful as a quick left hook. One is reminded, in the May-December coupling of the older woman and the outsider some years her junior, of melodramas like All That Heaven Allows or Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. It’s them against the world, one thinks, a bit romantically—but then one remembers the world.

Print courtesy of the Austrian Film Museum.

Tickets - Pay what you can ($10 suggested donation), available at door.

Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served, except for members subscribed at $8/month or more, who may reserve a seat by emailing information@lightindustry.org at least two hours prior to showtime. Box office opens at 6:30pm. No entry 10 minutes after start of show.

Light Industry is supported by our members and, in part, by the Mellon Foundation through the Coalition of Small Arts New York. Public assistance is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.