John Smith Movies

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.

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

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

Directed by John Smith

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...

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.

16mm experimental film of a desk fan.

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...

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

‘Dungeness’ was originally made for ‘Dungeness: The Desert in the Garden’, a multi-media theatre production directed by...

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

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

A biblical interpretation of airline safety instructions.

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

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...

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

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...

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...

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

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