Let There Be Whistleblowers

A train passes through a tunnel and hurtles onto a station as time and space are distorted, set to the first part of Steve Reich’s “Drumming”. “The sound lends the film an almost voodoo-like atmosphere, not to mention accruing sexual overtones, as the locomotive enters and reenters a tunnel, or blurry patches of grey and white turn out to be passengers waving white handkerchiefs from open windows, like some ambiguous ancient ritual. History dissolves and becomes a facet of perception while both railways and film become means of twisting perception, as the subversive double meaning of the title’s ‘whistleblowers’ suggests.” Kirsty Bell, Frieze Magazine, Oct 2014.
Let There Be Whistleblowers constitutes an early foray into digital media, incorporating editing techniques developed in analogue film and specifically the Nervous System performances, in which the duo would manipulate multiple 16 mm film projectors to achieve 3D depth effects from two-dimensional imagery – an optical effect that Jacobs called “Eternalism”.
Presented in memory of Flo and Ken Jacobs, the film was originally screened in Forum Expanded’s second edition in 2007. Until their passing in June and October of last year, respectively, the New York couple were close friends of the Arsenal, as well as Berlinale Forum and Forum Expanded.

Ken Jacobs (1933–2025) studied painting with Hans Hofmann from 1956 to 1957. He started making films in 1955. In 1966, Jacobs founded the Millennium Film Workshop, of which he was the director until 1968. A year later he started the Department of Cinema at the State University of New York in Binghamton. He taught there from 1974 until his retirement in 2000. Along with teaching cinema, he made a number of experimental films and videos, which have been shown worldwide. In addition, he presented a series of film performances under the names “The Nervous System” since the mid 1970s and “The Nervous Magic Lantern” since 2000.

Flo Jacobs (1941–2025) was a New York-based painter, producer and filmmaker closely associated with the American avant-garde film scene. After leaving art school in the early 1960s, she worked with experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs, producing and performing in many of his projects and co-founding the Millennium Film Workshop in 1966. Jacobs appeared in and helped shape key works of expanded cinema and collaborated across film, performance and visual art.

Directors Ken Jacobs, Flo Jacobs.

Films

Ken Jacobs: 1955: Orchard Street (Forum Expanded 2015). 1960: Little Stabs at Happiness. 1964: Window. 1990: Opening the Nineteenth Century: 1896. 1999: Flo Rounds a Corner. 2003: Keeping an Eye on Stan. 2004: Star Spangled to Death. 2005: Spiral Nebula (Forum Expanded 2006), Let There Be Whistleblowers. 2011: Seeking the Monkey King (Forum Expanded 2012). 2013: A Primer in Sky Socialism (Forum Expanded 2014), The Guests (Forum 2014). 2014: Cyclops Observes the Celestial Bodies (Forum Expanded 2015). 2016: Ulysses in the Subway (co-directed by Flo Jacobs, Marc Downie, Paul Kaiser, Forum Expanded 2017), Popeye Sees 3D (Forum Expanded 2017). 2019: The Whole Shebang (Forum Expanded 2020).

Flo Jacobs: 2016: Ulysses in the Subway (co-directed by Ken Jacobs, Marc Downie, Paul Kaiser, Forum Expanded 2017).