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Cinema Elvire Popesco -
Friday, December 12, 2014 - 18:00
Cinematography:
John Smith
Editing:
John Smith
Producer:
John Smith
Romanian premiere
Screened in 2013 at Oberhausen, what at first seems to be the start of a SF movie (a ceiling filmed in a fixed shot, with a voice talking about a strange movement witnessed earlier) turns into a handy-cam video about the contrast between the normality of a hotel room and the abnormality of the society surrounding it. Beginning in Bethlehem and ending on the other side of the Separation Wall, DIRTY PICTURES builds a sample of meta-cinema reminiscent of Chris Marker, which relates the director’s own experience of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, brilliantly managing to trim down the monstrosity of history to human proportions. (Bianca Bănică, BIEFF)
Director:
JOHN SMITH was born in Walthamstow, East London in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. Since 1972 he has made over fifty film, video and installation works that have been shown in independent cinemas and art galleries around the world. His work has been awarded major prizes at many international film festivals and has been profiled through retrospective programs at festivals in Oberhausen, Cork, Tampere, Saint Petersburg, Uppsala, La Rochelle, Regensburg, Winterthur, Karlstad, Mexico City, Glasgow and Bristol. Presently, John Smith lives and works in London and teaches part-time at the University of East London, where he is Professor of Fine Art.
Website:
Contact:
info[at]johnsmithfilms[dot]com
Festivals, awards:
- Oberhausen International Short Film Festival 2013
- Cinema du Reel International Documentary Film Festival
- Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival 2007
- Best Short Documentary - Chicago Underground Film Festival 2008
- Honorary Mention for an Outstanding Documentary Film - Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film
- Pompidou Centre, Paris 2008
Curator's comment:
Nothing in John Smith's long career as Britain's wittiest maker of avant-garde films suggested that he would turn his deadpan gaze on the plight of the Palestinian people, yet this is the theme that slowly comes to dominate the diary pieces that Smith made during his travels around film festivals. Tristam Shandy-esque observations on his immediate surroundings gradually turn into a sustained reflection on what it would be like to be trapped in Palestine. Finally, SMITH finds himself in Israel, able to see the territory that has begun to obsess him - the result is as powerful as Simone Bitton's Mur (Wall, 2004). A deeply engaging work that provokes an unexpected comparison with the master of oblique polemic, Chris Marker. (Ian Christie, Best of 2008, Sight & Sound.)
Nothing in John Smith's long career as Britain's wittiest maker of avant-garde films suggested that he would turn his deadpan gaze on the plight of the Palestinian people, yet this is the theme that slowly comes to dominate the diary pieces that Smith made during his travels around film festivals. Tristam Shandy-esque observations on his immediate surroundings gradually turn into a sustained reflection on what it would be like to be trapped in Palestine. Finally, SMITH finds himself in Israel, able to see the territory that has begun to obsess him - the result is as powerful as Simone Bitton's Mur (Wall, 2004). A deeply engaging work that provokes an unexpected comparison with the master of oblique polemic, Chris Marker. (Ian Christie, Best of 2008, Sight & Sound.)