| Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son | |
| Director: | Ken Jacobs |
| Distributor: | The Film-Makers' Cooperative |
| Runtime: | 115 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son is a 1969 American experimental film made by Ken Jacobs.[1]
In a meticulous experiment in rephotography, Jacobs deconstructs, manipulates, and recontextualizes a small fragment of found footage: a 1905 film showing a group of people chasing a thief through a barn, (shot and directed by G.W. ‘Billy’ Bitzer),[2] "rescued via a paper print filed for copyright purposes with the Library of Congress," according to Jacobs.[3] Jacobs' refashioning of the footage is an essayistic meditation on the nature of cinematic representation; in the words of Chicago Reader critic Fred Camper, it is "a film about watching movies."[4]
The film is considered a landmark in avant-garde and structural filmmaking, and remains Jacobs' best-known work.[4] It was inducted to the National Film Registry in 2007, and is part of Anthology Film Archives' "Essential Cinema" repertory.[5]