Cinema Scope

Ken Jacobs’ Nervous Magic Lantern

Ken Jacobs moves secretively in the halfdark that surrounds his apparatus. (“I’m terrible at keeping secrets,” he later admits to the assembled crowd.) Every ten minutes or so, Flo Jacobs exchanges one of what might be a dozen or so miniature flying saucers with her husband, who feeds the elaborately adorned platters into a large, mysterious box. As overflowing with uncontainable luminosity as’s whatsit, this contraption is Jacobs’ Nervous Magic Lantern, a legendary device known to sculpt painted light into tangible space.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Cinema Scope

Cinema Scope8 min read
Now or Never
In what will likely be my last column in these pages, I’ve mainly tried to highlight releases and films that I’ve been meaning yet failing to watch for ages, following the assumption that it’s now or never. As most of my examples make clear, this avo
Cinema Scope15 min read
Open Source
It requires relatively little mental strain to imagine a world in which all that can be photographed has been; it requires, I think, considerably more to imagine one in which every possible photograph has been made. I find that both of these little t
Cinema Scope18 min read
Last Of The Independents
Don Siegel’s superior crime picture Charley Varrick (1973) was supposed to be called Last of the Independents, but that title was nixed by Universal honcho Lew Wasserman. This probably gives even more credence to the subversive, stick-it-to-the-syste

Related