John Smith Filmes

While the Iraq war continues, a day’s sightseeing and the features of a German hotel provoke a stream of thoughts about events large and small.

The filmmaker returns to the city where he made the first video in the series [Frozen War] and looks back at the events of the past six years.

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...

Rapid cutting between identically framed portrait photographs creates composite faces and various illusions of movement. The film features...

‘Covid Messages’ is a video in six parts, based around broadcasts of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 press conferences. The...

Filmed in and around Margate on the English coast, Horizon (Five Pounds a Belgian) consists of a series of identically composed images of views out...

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

A reworking of material from the 16mm film ‘Blue Bathroom’, a distillation of ideas concerning the tension between representation and...

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...

“If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” Matthew 5:38-40

An exploration of the ambiguities of documentary photographs which develops ideas triggered by a German pun. Worst Case Scenario starts out as a...

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...

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...

Filmmaker John Smith revisits the original locations of his seminal experimental film The Girl Chewing Gum (1976) after 35 years, using...

As the camera looks out through a barred window and the clock strikes four in a Swiss city, the death of Yasser Arafat provides the starting point...

A particularly beautiful lily seems to grow before our eyes, gradually changing shape; what sounds like breathing on the sound track gives it an...

Filmed from the artist’s window during the first English lockdown, ‘Citadel’ combines short fragments from British Prime Minister...

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...

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

On the 23rd of June 2016 Britain voted to leave the European Union. Who Are We? is a re-working of material from a BBC television debate transmitted...