28. Stuttgarter Filmwinter – Festival for Expanded Media
The festival 28. Stuttgarter Filmwinter will screen three short films by English filmmaker John Smith as part of a retrospective on his work.
“The films of John Smith are among the most widely seen and appreciated of the UK avant-garde. Rigorous in structure and highly crafted in making, they extend the logic of language to question the authority of the image and the word. Among the complex features of these films is perhaps an attempt to sidestep, in a knight’s move, Brecht’s critique of cinema, his ‘fundamental reproach’ that a film is ‘the result of a production that took place in the absence of an audience’. In John Smith’s films, the spectator is a producer as well as a consumer of meaning, bound in to the process but simultaneously distanced from the ‘naturalness’ of the film dream.”
From ‘Associations: John Smith and the artists’ film in the UK’, A L Rees 2002
John Smith Retrospektive am 17. Januar, 20:00 Uhr
The Girl Chewing Gum
“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 is fictional. Sharp and direct, the film anticipates the more elaborate scenarios to come.” (A.L. Rees, A Directory of British Film & Video Artists 1995)
Flag Mountain
Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus: The camera looks over the rooftops of the Greek Cypriot south to the mountains of the Turkish Republic in the north, where a display of nationalism is enhanced by filmic means. Moving between macro and micro perspectives, Flag Mountain sets dramatic spectacle against everyday life as the inhabitants of both sides of the city go about their daily business.
Dad’s Stick
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 in history that their original forms and functions were almost completely obscured. The film creates a dialogue between abstraction and literal meaning, exploring the contradictions of memory to hint at the character of “a perfectionist with a steady hand”.
Tickets
- Single Ticket: 6,50 Euro / 5,50 Euro (reduced)
- Budget card with 6 tickets (transferable): 30 Euro