(1957-59/2003, 16mm film transferred to video, 6 hrs.45 min.)

Star Spangled To Death is Ken Jacobs' devastating and mesmerizing critique of mainstream American culture as revealed through a parade of amazing found-films salvaged from mid-20th-century dustbins, and seen here against a visual backdrop of late-50s artist drop-outs (led by Jack Smith and Jerry Sims) cavorting whimsically on the streets of Lower Manhattan. Almost a half-century in the making, Star Spangled is a bracing corrective tonic to the unchallenged control media has always had in shaping our opinions and ideals. Jacobs describes it as "a social-critique picturing a stolen and dangerously sold-out America, allowing examples of popular culture to self-indict."