The Girl Chewing Gum

A portrait of the artist as a not so young man. The film-maker attempts to enter the digital age by making a new video version of his 1978 film 7P.

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.

“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

John Smith’s Leading Light evolves a sense of screen depth and surface through the simple agency of light. The film is shot in a room over a period of a day and records the changes in light through the single window. The image is controlled through manipulation of aperture, of shutter release, of lens, but the effect is more casual than determined and the spectator is aware primarily of the determining nature of following sunlight.

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.

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.

'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.

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.

An improvisation recorded over the course of one day, starting at dawn and finishing after dusk. The film was edited in camera and shot from one camera position in the middle of one of the 112 football pitches that cover Hackney Marsh, a location chosen because of the similarities between the surrounding buildings and objects (identical blocks of flats, goalposts etc.). By cutting between precisely matched framings of similar objects, illusions of movement were produced, disrupting representational readings of the landscape. Unforeseen events occurring in the vicinity were also recorded, determining to some extent the subsequent filming. Through selection of shots and changes in cutting pace and speed of camera movement, the film fluctuates between record and abstraction.

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

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.

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 T’aime 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 Who’s My Favourite Girl? - Adrian J. McDowall

‘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.

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.

‘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.

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