Star Spangled to Death

One of the last surviving giants of avant garde American cinema, Ken Jacobs spent 50 years assembling this six-hour epic video commentary on a half century of US mischief, mistakes and occasional downright madness. This found-footage feast of cartoons, information films, documentaries and musicals, given fresh context and impact when threaded with Jacobs' own sequences. Primarily from street-level late '50s NYC, these chart the emergence of a new cinema, society and way of being. It's a panoramic vision of a country's schizophrenic stumbling towards this delirious now. Moments to savour include a pre-presidential Nixon seeking the modest man's vote with a telling lift from Abe Lincoln: 'God must have loved the common people, he made so many of them.'