Tom, Tom, the piper's son / Ken Jacobs ; assisted [by] Flo Jacobs, Jordan Meyers, Judy Dauterman.

This DVD release of the silent experimental film by Ken Jacobs begins by presenting the entire eight-shot, 10-minute 1905 short film Tom, Tom, the piper's son originally produced by American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. The filmmaker then rephotographs it in detail; some segments are run in slow motion, some enlarged, some in freeze frame, etc. Two color sequences were also added.

"Tom, Tom, the piper's son (115 min, 1969, silent except for projector at beginning and end): Ghosts! Cine-recordings of the vivacious doings of persons long dead. Preservation of their memory ceases at the edges of the frame. One face passes "behind" another on the two-dimensional screen. Seven infinitely complex cine-tapestries indicate a narrative-path not taken. My camera closes in to better see the action, playing with fate, taking advantage of the loop-character of all movies. I see a person, confused, suddenly looking out of an actor's face. But I want to show another kind of screen-action, to "bring to the surface" that multi-rhythmic collision and contesting of dark and light two-dimensional force-areas struggling edge to edge for identity of shape. To get into the grain pattern itself, unique to each frame, each cold still, stirred to life by a successive 16-24 fps pattering on our retinas. The grains! the grains! collaborating unknowing to form the always-poignant-because-always-past illusion."--Ken Jacobs.

"A Tom Tom chaser: (10 min, 2002, silent): An electronic riff on "Tom, Tom, the piper's son". Inspired by watching Scot Olive, master technician at The Tape House (now Postworks), zip forward and back on their Spirit scanner. I asked Scot if we could record some of this electronic scribbling incidental to film-to-digital transfer. Sure, he said, and I stood cheering him on to wilder aberrations. What we got is pretty much what you see here, less some judicious excisions."--Ken Jacobs.