John Smith

Home Suite, Smith’s first video work, is a close-up journey through a domestic landscape and a journey through memory, containing only three...

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

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.

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...

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

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

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...

16mm experimental film of a desk fan.

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

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

A larger than life tribute to Prince Philip, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, recorded in 2002 and completed on the day of his death, April...

‘Dungeness’ was originally made for ‘Dungeness: The Desert in the Garden’, a multi-media theatre production directed by...

In the mid 1970s the EMI company were preparing to market the newly developed video disc. Being uncertain as to what content would be appropriate,...

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...

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

Waiting by the sea with his camera ready for action, the artist complains about the weather and attempts to describe his intentions and working...

Home Suite, Smith’s first video work, is a close-up journey through a domestic landscape and a journey through memory, containing only three...

THE CAMERA, THE ACTOR was commissioned by musician Charles Hayward to accompany the song of the same name on his album entitled (Begin Anywhere).

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...

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...

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.

Reflecting on past political problems and the state of the world as it was provides no tools or means for envisioning the future.

The discovery of a VHS tape of the artist's films on eBay triggers obsessive speculation about the seller's identity.

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

A view across the border in Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. The camera looks over the rooftops of the Greek Cypriot south to the mountains of...

Dad’s Stick features three well-used objects that were shown to the artist by his father shortly before he died. Two of these were so steeped...

“London artist John Smith uses light-hearted humour to explore theoretical concerns - Gargantuan, for instance, is both pleasantly silly and...

'Associations' sets language against itself by using the ambiguities inherent in the English language. Images from magazines and color supplements...

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

This critically acclaimed DVD contains 16 of the best classic and award winning British short films and delivers a snapshot of British cinema past...

A disorientating experience while attempting to watch the TV news in an Irish hotel room triggers a spontaneous response to the bombing of...

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 perception of an Anglo-American hotel room is coloured by new revelations about ‘The War on Terror’ and ‘The Special...

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.

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...

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

Hamas have just won the Palestinian elections and a chocolate bar in a Rotterdam hotel room eventually reminds the filmmaker that there are more...

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...

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...

A personal interpretation of the poetry and letters of T S Eliot which explores the ambiguities of language and space in a scenario built around an...

A film by John Smith and Ian Bourn

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

Many of my films involve humour, but unlike the earlier work Shepherd’s Delight attempts to confront the problem of humour head-on, referring...

Recorded from a smartphone screen, its translation app running on the wrong settings and struggling to interpret North London street signs in French...

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.

Blue Bathroom is a distillation of ideas concerning the tension between representation and materiality. It begins with an apparently straightforward...

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...

Artist John Smith tells stories about tower block life, editing in bold, unconventional fashion, cutting into the material and highlighting the...

On December 1st 1990, watched by the world’s media, construction worker Graham Fagg of Dover climbed through a hole in a chalk wall 40 metres...

On December 1st 1990, watched by the world’s media, construction worker Graham Fagg of Dover climbed through a hole in a chalk wall 40 metres...

On December 1st 1990, watched by the world’s media, construction worker Graham Fagg of Dover climbed through a hole in a chalk wall 40 metres...

On December 1st 1990, watched by the world’s media, construction worker Graham Fagg of Dover climbed through a hole in a chalk wall 40 metres...

On December 1st 1990, watched by the world’s media, construction worker Graham Fagg of Dover climbed through a hole in a chalk wall 40 metres...

The only time I’ve visited a communist country was when I went to Poland in 1980, not long after Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative...

Directed by John Smith

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 biblical interpretation of airline safety instructions.

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

A biblical interpretation of airline safety instructions.

A biblical interpretation of airline safety instructions.

A biblical interpretation of airline safety instructions.

A biblical interpretation of airline safety instructions.

Abstract animation punctuated by found footage, cut to the song White Light / White Heat by The Velvet Underground.

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

'Shine So Hard' is a rare Echo and the Bunnymen promotional concert film, taking place during their 1981 'Camo Tour'.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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