[1] He moved to New York, where he directed several experimental short films modeled after the Soviet social and political cinema and he was fond of and drew inspirations from the likes of Dziga Vertov and Hans Richter.
In 1930, Jacobs founded the magazine Experimental Cinema, which was one of the first publications to view film as art.
[dubious – discuss] In 1933 he compiled all the footage he had made during his lunch breaks and put it into the film Footnote to Fact, which was intended to be part one in a four-part documentary titled As I Walk, a look into the depths of poverty during the Great Depression in NYC.
The final three parts were never completed and the original negative was believed lost until it was rediscovered by the Anthology Film Archives in 1990.
[1] In 1967, he wrote the screenplay for the film Sweet Love, Bitter (1967), which went on to become the inspiration for Clint Eastwood's Bird.