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| By public demand John Smith's Hotel Diaries has been extended to Sunday. The last screening will take place at 5pm on Sunday 21st. |
One of Britain’s leading filmmakers, John Smith studied film at the Royal College of Art, and since 1972 has made over forty film, video and installation works. His films have been widely shown internationally in cinemas, art galleries and on television, and awarded major prizes at many film festivals around the world.
John is a regular visitor to the Cork festival, and has won two best short film awards here. |
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On 8th October 2001, just after the USA and Britain started bombing Afghanistan, I was at the Cork Film Festival. Returning to my hotel room late at night I switched on the television, intending to catch up on the latest news. Perturbed and disorientated by what I saw, I picked up my video camera and attempted to articulate what was going on inside my head. A section of this spontaneous recording eventually became the video ‘Frozen War’.
I spend a lot of time in hotels, usually as the guest of organisations that are screening my films. For a few days each hotel room, decorated and arranged to suit someone else’s idea of comfort, taste and convenience, becomes my temporary home. After making ‘Frozen War’ I started thinking about the artificial and cosseting environment of the hotel room and its stark contrast to the contemporary horrors of the wider world, fragmented news of which is filtered into the space through CNN and BBC World. Over the past six years I have made a series of single-shot videotapes based on these ideas. In these works, which play 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 personal experiences and world events are connected.
- John Smith, September 2007
…These deceptively unassuming works consist of single takes from the point of view of Smith’s camcorder as he explores the nocturnal spaces of hotels he is staying in and delivers monologues on his thoughts and observations. At once politically concerned and very funny, these brilliantly structured ramblings connect the observations of his surroundings with the horror of world events in consistently surprising ways.
- Maximilian Le Cain, Film Ireland. |
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Frozen War
Ireland | 2001 | 11mins
A spontaneous response to the bombing of Afghanistan triggered by a disorientating experience in an Irish hotel room. |
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Museum Piece
Germany | 2004 | 13mins
While the Iraq war continues, a day's sightseeing and the features of a German hotel provoke a stream of thoughts about events large and small.
Best International Short Film, Cork Film Festival, 2005 |
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Throwing Stones
Switzerland | 2004 | 11mins
As the camera looks out through a barred window and the clock strikes four in a Swiss city, the death of Yasser Arafat provides the starting point for a journey back in time.
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B & B
England | 2005 | 6mins
The perception of an Anglo-American hotel room is coloured by new revelations about 'The War on Terror' and 'The Special Relationship' that exists between Britain and the USA.
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Pyramids/Skunk
The Netherlands | 2006/2007 | 16mins
Hamas have just won the Palestinian
elections and a chocolate bar in a Rotterdam hotel room eventually reminds the filmmaker that there are more important things going on in the world outside. Exactly one year later he returns to the same city and checks in at a very different hotel. |
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Dirty Pictures
Palestine | 2007 | 14mins
Moving from one hotel in Bethlehem to another in East Jerusalem, the filmmaker
encounters a series of problems involving a ceiling, a video camera and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. |
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Hotel Diaries will be screened in a hotel room in Jury’s Hotel on the Western Road. The programme lasts 75 minutes. The screenings are free but ticketed.
The room can be booked by individuals or small groups (maximum five people). Tickets are available from the Festival Box Office. A festival staff member will meet the audience in the hotel foyer and take them to the room.
| The Hotel Diaries screenings are sponsored by Jury’s Hotel. |
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