[1] Jacob attended a teacher's college there before traveling to Canada in 1968 to complete a Bachelor of Education at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
After graduation, Jacob completed a master's degree in film studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
[2][3] It was while teaching in Lac La Biche, Alberta in the late 1970s that Jacob had the idea for his first film: a documentary about black immigrants from Oklahoma who settled in Amber Valley, Alberta, which after several years of research was completed as We Remember Amber Valley (1984).
[2][3] Jacob's subsequent directorial credits include The Saint from North Battleford (1989), a portrait of Rueben Mayes; Carol's Mirror (1991), an educational film about racism and equality; Al Tasmim, a film about Canada's oldest mosque; and The Road Taken (1996), a documentary about the history of Black railway porters, which received the Canada Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television.
His NFB producing credits include The Journey of Lesra Martin, about Lesra Martin, a Canadian youth who helped to free Rubin "Hurricane" Carter from prison; Jeni LeGon: Living in a Great Big Way (1999), a portrait of Jeni Le Gon, a Vancouver resident who had been one of the first Black women entertainers in Hollywood to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio; John McCrae's War: In Flanders Fields (1998), a look at Canadian army doctor John McCrae, who wrote the poem, "In Flanders Fields"; Colleen Leung's Letters from Home (2001); Linda Ohama's Obāchan's Garden (2001); Ling Chiu's From Harling Point (2003), about the first Chinese cemetery in Canada; Eunhee Cha's A Tribe of One (2003); and Mighty Jerome (2010), a documentary film about African-Canadian track star Harry Jerome directed by Charles Officer.