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May '68: When Culture was Radicalised
Festival of Ideas and Watershed Media Centre welcome award-winning artist and filmmaker John Smith to present the UK premiere of Hotel Diaries, following its recent screening at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. Made in hotel rooms across the world over a period of six years, this latest feature-length work is a politically engaged, perfectly observed and often very funny series of video recordings, each relating personal experiences and reflections to the current conflicts in the Middle East. Playing upon chance and coincidence, the hotel room is employed as a 'found' film set, where the architecture, furnishing and decoration become the means by which the filmmaker’s small adventures are linked to major world events. Mark Cosgrove, Watershed's Creative Director, said of the film’s significance: "Much is currently being written about the impact of May '68 on culture - but do we have a film culture which has realised any of the radical political aspirations? Hotel Diaries, directed by John Smith, is one such film. In it, Smith manages to bring together the personal, political and poetic. A simple idea - filming a diary in a hotel room - becomes a radical meditation on war, the Middle East and global tensions. Hotel Diaries, in its own subtle way, is as radical filmmaking as was being asked for in May 1968." One of a younger generation of avant-garde filmmakers strongly associated with the London Film-makers' Co-op, John Smith has made more than 40 film, video and installation works since 1972. Watershed has had an ongoing relationship with the artist for the last 6 years, and in 2002 produced a publication, John Smith: Film and Video Works 1972-2002, in partnership with Bristol-based moving image projects agency Picture This, to coincide with a major touring retrospective. Smith’s major works include The Girl Chewing Gum (1976), The Black Tower (1987), Slow Glass (1991), Blight (1996) and Worst Case Scenario (2003). |
