Spaghetti Aza

The spirited Ken Jacobs (1933–2025) unabashedly chose “nervousken” as his email pseudonym. Indeed, during his film screenings, Jacobs often had to warn the audience about extreme flickering effects, which could trigger epilepsy in the viewer’s nervous system. That audience inevitably came to know the filmmaker as a particularly agitated American citizen who seized every opportunity to express his outrage at the state apparatus. At the same time, in the midst of the Vietnam crisis, he invited viewers to spend two hours musing on the quiet beauty of a short film from 1905, which he studied in the finest detail with his camera. This film, Tom Tom the Piper’s Son (1969), became a classic of structuralist cinema, given a digital remake by Jacobs himself in 2008 (Return to the Scene of the Crime), as well as a 3D version (Anaglyph Tom with Puffy Cheeks).

With over 120 titles, Jacobs’ filmography is as extensive as it is diverse. He did not shy away from epic lengths (Star Spangled to Death runs for over seven hours), but he also loved ultra-short videographic experiments in which he played out an optical illusion of his own devising, his so-called “eternalisms.” Jacobs ventured into lyrical as well as abstract, nonsensical as well as unabashedly political, pornographic, or, conversely, particularly meditative films. He not only recycled archival footage but also enjoyed performing with a contemporary version of the magic lantern: his Nervous Magic Lantern performances. He always did this in the company of his partner Flo and was usually accompanied by avant-garde musicians such as John Zorn or Aki Onda. His daughter, Nisi Ariana Jacobs, also occasionally provided the soundtrack.

The micro home-movie Spaghetti Aza shows a different side of nervous Ken. This endearing observation paints not only a portrait of a sleepy boy but also, indirectly, of two doting parents. Although to acknowledge and simultaneously problematise his Jewish identity, Jacobs named his son Azazel, a name that in Hebrew is synonymous with scapegoat or fallen angel, and is typically depicted as a horned, demonic figure.

By 2008, Azazel had become a director in his own right, and he once again appeared in bed between his parents. In his second feature film, Momma’s Man (2008), he plays himself, and Ken and Flo also make cameo appearances against the backdrop of their cluttered, intimate loft.