John Smith | The Girl Chewing Gum

John Smith’s excellent short film The Girl Chewing Gum turns fifty a week from today. Its first ever screening took place at the London Filmmakers’ Co-op on the 10th of March 1976. 

In celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary, it will be presented at the Close-Up Cinema in Shoreditch on the exact same date, together with ‘The Man Phoning Mum’ (2011), ‘Being John Smith’ (2024) and the first ever screening of the artist's latest video ‘Two Pids’ (2026).

The programme will screen twice, at 6.00pm and 8.00pm. Smith will be in attendance, in conversation with Stanley Schtinter after the first screening and Erika Balsom after the second. 

The twelve minute film widely acknowledged as one of the most important avant-garde films of the 20th century. It was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2019. I don’t think I ever taught film or video students without showing it. 

John Smith awarded Jarman prize

John Smith (b. 1952, Walthamstow, England) has been announced as this year's winner of the The Jarman Award, an annual prize named for British filmmaker Derek Jarman. Jarman's output includes Caravaggio, Edward II, Wittgenstein, Blue and a few music videos for the Smiths. Blue, from 1993, was released a few months before the filmmaker died of AIDS related complications. He was partially blind when producing the 79 minute film, whose only image is a rich saturated blue.

The Jarman Award recognizes "individual artist film-makers whose risk-taking work resists boundaries and conventional definition - work that encompasses innovation, excellence and vision."

The winner receives a £10,000 cash prize, and a broadcast commission to produce a series of filmworks for Channel 4.

Check out Smith's brilliant 1976 short The Girl Chewing Gum on Youtube, here. It's available on DVD as part of a compilation of British shorts, here.