“To Really See This Movie”: Ken Jacobs on Tom, Tom … in 1969

Abstract Federico Windhausen's “‘To Really See This Movie’: Ken Jacobs on Tom, Tom … in 1969” introduces and contextualizes a newly edited transcript of Ken Jacobs's September 16, 1969, appearance at the Museum of Modern Art's Cineprobe series. The essay reconstructs the historical circumstances of the screening and situates the event within the broader relationship between avant-garde filmmakers and MoMA at the end of the 1960s. Windhausen recounts how Jacobs's program, which included an early editing print of Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son, unfolded amid projection errors and public skepticism from “MoMA regulars.” The surviving audio recording captures some of Jacobs's earliest sustained public reflections on Tom, Tom, revealing the filmmaker's excitement in presenting the work as both an act of rediscovery and a new creation—a “film found and a film made.”