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by John SMITH
2024 / HD / color-b&w / sound and silent / 1 screen / 26' 45
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“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."
– New York Film Festival
"Though the film seems to be about how one’s name can be a disadvantage and create long-lasting prejudice in life, it is also much more. Rather, it is a witty, moving, humorous meditation on aging, life, politics, change, mortality and the role of art and the artist over time. Using economical means with no-nonsense inventiveness, the film is coherent, concise and complex all at once, flowing like gentle waves throughout. With self-deprecating gusto Smith creates a portrait of dignified fragility and vulnerability, but also resilience. BEING JOHN SMITH is at once personal as it is highly political, reflecting as it does, on the current moment of dystopian disbelief as the world ploughs forward in high-capitalist mode, increasing polarization and atomization. Despite the disheartening socio-political subtext, the film at once affirms the belief in the emancipatory potential of culture and community."
– Jury statement, Hamburg International Short Film Festival, Germany, 2025 (Best International Film)
4 PRINTS IN DISTRIBUTION
|
distribution format |
DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
original language |
English |
|
rental fee |
112,00 € |
|
distribution format |
Digital file on server (HD) |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
original language |
English |
|
rental fee |
112,00 € |
|
distribution format |
Digital file on server (FHD) |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
original language |
English |
|
translation |
French (Embedded subtitles) |
|
rental fee |
112,00 € |
|
distribution format |
DCP on server (SMPTE 2K) |
|
screen |
16/9 (single screen) |
|
speed |
25 fps |
|
sound |
sound |
|
original language |
English |
|
translation |
French (Embedded subtitles) |
|
rental fee |
112,00 € |
