John Smith’s hugely influential film The Girl Chewing Gum was shown for the first time at the London Filmmakers’ Co-op on the 10th of March 1976. In celebration of the film’s 50th birthday it will be presented at Close-Up on the same date, together with The Man Phoning Mum (2011), Being John Smith (2024) and the world premiere of Smith’s latest video Two Pids (2026).

Both screenings will be introduced by Gareth Evans. John Smith will be in conversation with Stanley Schtinter after the 6pm screening and Erika Balsom after the 8pm screening.

In the run-up to this event The Girl Chewing Gum will be screening constantly in the window of the film’s primary location at the intersection of Kingsland Road E8 and Stamford Road N1.

The Girl Chewing Gum
John Smith, 1976, 12 min
"In 1976, while still a student at the Royal College of Art, John Smith filmed an ordinary street corner in East London: passersby, traffic, birds crossing the sky, people queueing for the cinema.  Only later did he add an authoritative voice-over that seems to orchestrate every movement on screen — his own voice of god retroactively claiming command over everything we see.  Inspired by Truffaut’s Day for Night, this avant-garde masterpiece exposes how cinema manufactures meaning through narration. A brilliant reflection on filmmaking, authorship and control, chance and intention, and the moment when description slips into instruction." – Nana Bahlmann

The Man Phoning Mum
John Smith, 2011, 12 min
Revisiting the locations of The Girl Chewing Gum after three and a half decades, the cinema has been demolished and Steele’s the glass company has turned into a scooter shop. The Man Phoning Mum retraces The Girl Chewing Gum’s camera movements and superimposes new material upon the old. Black-and-white passersby from 1976 meet their colourful 2011 counterparts in the well-trodden street, oblivious to each other’s existence.

Being John Smith
John Smith, 2024, 27 min
“An autobiographical reflection on his unassuming name leads the filmmaker down a wayward path through family photographs, personal archives, and internet searches.  Alternately wry and wistful, peppered with Smith’s characteristically droll commentary, Being John Smith flits between self-deprecation and cris de coeur, offering quietly hilarious observations on Smith’s lower middle-class origins and career as an avant-garde cinema luminary, as well as unexpectedly melancholic impressions on age and extinction.” – New York Film Festival

Two Pids
John Smith, 2026, 5 min
After the world premiere of Being John Smith at the Toronto Film Festival a strange coincidence in the filmmaker’s hotel causes him to question the nature of reality.