Details:

Three Views of London with filmmaker John Smith in person

THE BLACK TOWER 

(John Smith, 1987, 24 min, 16mm-to-digital)

SLOW GLASS 

(John Smith, 1991, 40 min, 16mm-to-digital)

CITADEL 

(John Smith, 2020, 16 min, HD digital)

RSVP

Only a filmmaker as deft, as deliberate, and as devilishly clever as John Smith could keep pace with the last five decades of London’s radical urban transformation. From pubs to public housing, shadowy edifices to sparkling spires, Smith’s films survey London’s sites of mass psychic, social, and commercial exchange; through the prisms of his intellect and his camera, he unmakes their solid forms, casting up the image of a city both crystalline and turbulent. 

The three films in this program approach London obliquely, beginning with 1987’s THE BLACK TOWER (1987, 24 min), whose abstract account of a city dweller plagued by visions of an omnipresent structure plays on the uncanny spirit of hostility in the commons of Thatcher’s England. From this opacity, SLOW GLASS (1991, 40 min) turns to principles of transparency and reflection to guide its anachronic sightseeing tour of East London. At once a tribute to the monumentality of the pint glass and a treatise on the ephemerality of property, SLOW GLASS showcases the unique temporal economy of Smith’s cinema. Thence, CITADEL (2020) flashes forward to a moment when London threatens to disappear entirely into the spectacle. Completed during the first Coronavirus lockdown, CITADEL is composed of views of the city’s financial centre taken from the filmmaker’s apartment window, offset by a soundtrack of public bloviations by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Smith’s once-in-a-generation gift for visual satire looms large in this masterwork, which wields architecture the way Gillray and Hogarth wielded caricature. 

Following the screening, filmmaker John Smith will appear in person for discussion, in partnership with the Art, Theory and Practice program at Northwestern University. Smith will also appear at 6pm on Thursday November 5 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, where he returns to Conversations at the Edge for a special program celebrating the 25th anniversary of his appearance at the very first CATE screening. Block Cinema would like to thank Amy Beste, Steve Reinke, Michael Rakowitz, and Abina Manning for the opportunity to welcome Smith to Northwestern.

Films Screened:

THE BLACK TOWER 

(John Smith, 1987, 24 min, 16mm-to-digital)

SLOW GLASS 

(John Smith, 1991, 40 min, 16mm-to-digital)

CITADEL 

(John Smith, 2020, 16 min, HD digital)

Total runtime: approx. 80 min.

About the Artist:

John Smith is a British artist-filmmaker whose slyly humorous and formally rigorous works explore the unstable boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation, and abstraction. Since 1972, Smith has created more than 60 films, videos, and installations, earning major international festival prizes, as well as the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2011 and the Jarman Award in 2013. His 2024 film Being John Smith was a finalist for the European Film Academy Awards. Recent solo exhibitions include the Vienna Secession, Kate MacGarry, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. His work is held in such collections as Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and FRAC Île-de-France. Smith lives and works in London and Aude, France, and is Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at the University of East London.

Contact The Block Museum of Art for more information: (847) 491-4000 or email us at block-museum@northwestern.edu