Stow Film Lounge @Mirth, Marvel & Maud, (former Granada cinema) 186 Hoe St, Walthamstow, London E17 4QH

We are delighted to announce an evening with John Smith who will be partaking in a Q&A as well showing some of his work.

Admission £3 (+ 51p booking fee)
https://billetto.co.uk/e/an-cinematic-evening-with-john-smith-tickets-194677/select

The Girl Chewing Gum (1976, 12 mins)
View an extract here: https://vimeo.com/74645011

“In The Girl Chewing Gum a commanding voice over appears to direct the action in a busy London street. As the instructions become more absurd and fantasised, we realise that the supposed director (not the shot) is fictional; he only describes – not prescribes – the events that take place before him. Smith embraced the ‘spectre of narrative’ (suppressed by structural film), to play word against picture and chance against order. Sharp and direct, the film anticipates the more elaborate scenarios to come; witty, many-layered, punning, but also seriously and poetically haunted by drama’s ineradicable ghost.” A.L. Rees, A Directory of British Film & Video Artists, 1995


The Black Tower (1985-7, 24 mins)
View an extract here: https://vimeo.com/74645010

In The Black Tower we enter the world of a man haunted by a tower which, he believes, is following him around London. While the character of the central protagonist is indicated only by a narrative voice-over which takes us from unease to breakdown to mysterious death, the images, meticulously controlled and articulated, deliver a series of colour coded puzzles, jokes and puns which pull the viewer into a mind-teasing engagement. Nik Houghton, Independent Media 1987


Blight (1994-96, 14 mins)
View an extract here: https://vimeo.com/74521669

Blight was made in collaboration with the composer Jocelyn Pook. It revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, which provoked a long and bitter campaign by local residents to protect their homes from demolition. The images in the film record some of the changes which occurred in the area over a two-year period, from the demolition of houses through to the start of motorway building work. The soundtrack incorporates natural sounds associated with these events together with speech fragments taken from recorded conversations with local people. -John Smith

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"John Smith was born in Walthamstow, East London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art, during which time he became involved in the activities of the London Filmmakers Co-op. Inspired in his formative years by conceptual art and structural film, but also fascinated by the immersive power of narrative and the spoken word, he has developed an extensive body of work that subverts the perceived boundaries between documentary and fiction, representation and abstraction. Often rooted in everyday life, Smith’s meticulously crafted films playfully explore and expose the language of cinema.

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 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2011, and in 2013 he was the winner of Film London’s Jarman Award.

John Smith’s films, videos and installations are the work of a master craftsman and a maestro of deception. As such, they offer multiple access points – thematic, formalist – whilst being irrefutably entertaining. Form and content are intrinsically bound together, puzzles to play with, to partially solve, as we are instructed not only in ways of seeing, but in an understanding of film predicated on demystifying its oft-masked means of construction.”

From ‘Information: Suspect, Construction: Evident’, Ian White, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival catalogue essay, 2002