Directing

John Smith

Born January 1, 1952 · London, England, UK (age 74)

John Smith was born in Walthamstow, London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art, during which time he became a member of the London Filmmakers Co-op. Since 1972 Smith has made over fifty film, video and installation works that have been shown in independent cinemas, art galleries and on television around the world and awarded major prizes at many international film festivals. He re…

Known For

Cinema16: British Short Films

Cinema16: British Short Films · 2003

Cinema16: British Short Films

This critically acclaimed DVD contains 16 of the best classic and award winning British short films and delivers a snapshot of British cinema past and present. It includes films from Britain's most exciting new talent alongside early shorts from it's most successful filmmakers' amongst them Chris Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins), Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Alien), Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies) and Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours). 01 About a Girl - Brian Percival 02 Boy & Bicycle - Ridley Scott 03 Dear Phone - Peter Greenaway 04 Doodlebug - Christopher Nolan 05 Eight - Stephen Daldry 06 Gasman - Lynne Ramsay 07 Girl Chewing Gum - John Smith 08 Home - Morag McKinnon 09 Joyride - Jim Gillespie 10 Inside Out - Tom & Charles Guard 11 Je Taime John Wayne - Toby Macdonald 12 The Sheep Thief - Asif Kapadia 13 The Short & Curlies - Mike Leigh 14 Telling Lies - Simon Ellis 15 UK Images - Martin Parr 16 Whos My Favourite Girl? - Adrian J. McDowall

Being John Smith

Being John Smith · 2024

Being John Smith

MovieDocumentaryComedy

Being John Smith is a deceptively wry and deeply felt work by the English avant-garde legend, in which Smith reflects on his life and career by way of his generic name, grappling with his own mortality and legacy, through a minimal, unassuming deployment of text, image, and voice.

Lost Sound

Lost Sound · 2001

Lost Sound documents fragments of discarded audio tape found on the streets of a small area of East London, combining the sound retrieved from each piece of tape with images of the place where it was found. The work explores the potential of chance, creating portraits of particular places by building formal, narrative and musical connections between images and sounds linked by the random discovery of the tape samples.

Blight

MovieDocumentary

A short film featuring the voices of those affected when the M11 Link Road in East London was built, accompanied by scenes and sounds of demolition.

Citadel

Citadel · 2021

MovieDocumentary

Filmed from the artist’s window during the first English lockdown, ‘Citadel’ combines short fragments from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speeches relating to coronavirus with views of the London skyline.

Associations

Associations · 1975

'Associations' sets language against itself by using the ambiguities inherent in the English language. Images from magazines and color supplements accompany a voice-over reading from the book 'Word Associations and Linguistic Theory' by academic linguistic Herbert H. Clark. Combining a wry sense of humor with word/visual games and puns, Smith explores the boundaries of cinematic montage by combining elements together and against each other in order to destroy and create multiple meanings at the same time.

The Black Tower

The Black Tower · 1987

The Black Tower

A man finds himself haunted by a mysterious black tower in London that appears to follow him wherever he goes.

The Girl Chewing Gum

The Girl Chewing Gum · 1976

The Girl Chewing Gum

At Stamford Road in Dalston Junction of east London, the camera follows pedestrians, cars and birds while a narrator, who appears to be the director behind the camera, seems to instruct the objects.

Filmography

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Cinema16: British Short Films

Cinema16: British Short Films · 2003

Cinema16: British Short Films

This critically acclaimed DVD contains 16 of the best classic and award winning British short films and delivers a snapshot of British cinema past and present. It includes films from Britain's most exciting new talent alongside early shorts from it's most successful filmmakers' amongst them Chris Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins), Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Alien), Mike Leigh (Secrets and Lies) and Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours). 01 About a Girl - Brian Percival 02 Boy & Bicycle - Ridley Scott 03 Dear Phone - Peter Greenaway 04 Doodlebug - Christopher Nolan 05 Eight - Stephen Daldry 06 Gasman - Lynne Ramsay 07 Girl Chewing Gum - John Smith 08 Home - Morag McKinnon 09 Joyride - Jim Gillespie 10 Inside Out - Tom & Charles Guard 11 Je Taime John Wayne - Toby Macdonald 12 The Sheep Thief - Asif Kapadia 13 The Short & Curlies - Mike Leigh 14 Telling Lies - Simon Ellis 15 UK Images - Martin Parr 16 Whos My Favourite Girl? - Adrian J. McDowall

Director

Being John Smith

Being John Smith · 2024

Being John Smith

MovieDocumentaryComedy

Being John Smith is a deceptively wry and deeply felt work by the English avant-garde legend, in which Smith reflects on his life and career by way of his generic name, grappling with his own mortality and legacy, through a minimal, unassuming deployment of text, image, and voice.

Director

Lost Sound

Lost Sound · 2001

Lost Sound documents fragments of discarded audio tape found on the streets of a small area of East London, combining the sound retrieved from each piece of tape with images of the place where it was found. The work explores the potential of chance, creating portraits of particular places by building formal, narrative and musical connections between images and sounds linked by the random discovery of the tape samples.

Director

Blight

MovieDocumentary

A short film featuring the voices of those affected when the M11 Link Road in East London was built, accompanied by scenes and sounds of demolition.

Director

Citadel

Citadel · 2021

MovieDocumentary

Filmed from the artist’s window during the first English lockdown, ‘Citadel’ combines short fragments from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s speeches relating to coronavirus with views of the London skyline.

Director

Associations

Associations · 1975

'Associations' sets language against itself by using the ambiguities inherent in the English language. Images from magazines and color supplements accompany a voice-over reading from the book 'Word Associations and Linguistic Theory' by academic linguistic Herbert H. Clark. Combining a wry sense of humor with word/visual games and puns, Smith explores the boundaries of cinematic montage by combining elements together and against each other in order to destroy and create multiple meanings at the same time.

Director

The Black Tower

The Black Tower · 1987

The Black Tower

A man finds himself haunted by a mysterious black tower in London that appears to follow him wherever he goes.

Director

The Girl Chewing Gum

The Girl Chewing Gum · 1976

The Girl Chewing Gum

At Stamford Road in Dalston Junction of east London, the camera follows pedestrians, cars and birds while a narrator, who appears to be the director behind the camera, seems to instruct the objects.

Director

A film about haircuts, clothes and image/sound relationships. - J.S.

Director

Slow Glass

Slow Glass · 1991

MovieDocumentary

From the idea that glass, even when cooled, is a liquid that changes in appearance over time, an offscreen narrator launches a recollection of the bygone days of manual glassmaking and an observation of the impact of the mass-produced glass on the changing appearance of England over time.

Director

Covid Messages

Covid Messages · 2021

MovieDocumentary

‘Covid Messages’ is a video in six parts, based around broadcasts of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 press conferences. The work focusses on the British government’s attempts to eliminate the virus through the use of magic spells and rituals. While the pandemic spreads and the death toll rises, the Prime Minister makes repeated errors of judgement. Exasperated by his many mistakes, the spirits of the dead rise up and intervene.

Director

Soft Work

Soft Work · 2012

Waiting by the sea with his camera ready for action, the artist complains about the weather and attempts to describe his intentions and working methods. Soft Work is a film about the making of a film, where the viewer can only imagine what that film might be. It was made spontaneously during the production of Horizon (Five Pounds a Belgian), a video installation commissioned by Turner Contemporary, Margate

Director

White Hole

White Hole · 2014

The only time I’ve visited a communist country was when I went to Poland in 1980, not long after Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government was first elected in Britain. I first visited the former East Germany in 1997, eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and a few months after Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ government was elected. Recalling these experiences many years later, White Hole questions our imaginings of life in other places, times and political systems, mirroring its narrative through its form.

Director

Twice

John Smith stands in front of a mirror, singing “Happy Birthday” in a minor key, like a funeral dirge, twice, as he washes his hands.

Director

Hotel Diaries

Hotel Diaries · 2007

MovieDocumentary

Made over six years in the hotels of six different countries, Hotel Diaries charts the 'War on Terror' era of Bush and Blair through a seven-part series of video recordings that relate personal experiences to the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Israel/Palestine. In these works, which play upon chance and coincidence, hotel rooms are employed as 'found' film sets, where architecture, furnishing and decoration become the means by which the filmmaker’s small adventures are linked to major world events.

Director

Man Number 4

Man Number 4 · 2024

MovieDocumentary

Gaza, December 2023. A confrontation with a disturbing photograph on social media triggers questions about what it means to be an onlooker.

Voiceover

Someone Moving

Someone Moving · 1973

Super 8 footage of a moving figure (Lis Rhodes), broken down into still frames and reanimated in superimposed layers. Soundtrack by Peter Cusack.

Director

In Far Away Land

In Far Away Land · 2019

In Far Away Land

MovieAnimationFantasy

Back stroke butterfly, front crawl and bras, we are awash in an ocean of bubbles. Meanwhile Captain Ahab sets sail on his magic carpet in search of the whale. All is not well in the world but Eden is there, fresh from her garden, tuning into “The Far Away Land”. We are deep in the cloud of our own making but help is at hand, and everything might yet be alright.

The Hut

The Hut · 1973

Directed by John Smith

Director

Shepherd’s Delight

Shepherd’s Delight · 1984

Shepherd’s Delight

Many of my films involve humour, but unlike the earlier work Shepherd’s Delight attempts to confront the problem of humour head-on, referring directly (since a large part of the film is composed of jokes and their analysis) to the viewer’s perception of the film itself. The film is largely concerned with how context determines the reading of information. Since the film’s statements oscillate between the deadly serious (concentrating particularly on an examination of the more sinister aspects of humour) and the totally bogus, with no clearly defined points of changeover, the context is often ambiguous. Hopefully, this strategy undermines both the authority of the ‘serious’ statements and any predictable effect of the ‘jokes’. John Smith, 1984

Director

Two Pids

Two Pids · 2026

After the world premiere of Being John Smith at the Toronto Film Festival a strange experience in the filmmaker’s hotel causes him to ponder the nature of reality.

Director

Dungeness

Dungeness · 1987

‘Dungeness’ was originally made for ‘Dungeness: The Desert in the Garden’, a multi-media theatre production directed by Graeme Miller. By selectively framing and alternating monochrome fields within the Dungeness landscape the film creates a series of abstract rhythms. Incidentally, and unbeknown to myself until years after filming, ‘Dungeness’ features a guest appearance from Derek Jarman’s then recently acquired Prospect Cottage.

Director

Hotel Diaries: Dirty Pictures

Hotel Diaries: Dirty Pictures · 2007

Hotel Diaries: Dirty Pictures

Moving from one hotel in Bethlehem to another in East Jerusalem, the filmmaker encounters a series of problems involving a ceiling, a video camera and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Director

Gargantuan

Gargantuan · 1992

“London artist John Smith uses light-hearted humour to explore theoretical concerns - Gargantuan, for instance, is both pleasantly silly and acutely conscious of how imagery depends entirely on its framing. A voice-over intones the words ‘huge’ and ‘strapping’ as a lizard almost fills the screen, then ‘medium’ as the camera zooms out, then ‘tiny’, and finally ‘minute’, a pun on the film’s running time.” Fred Camper, Chicago Reader 2001

Director