Blight
UK, 1994-1996
Director: John Smith
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 14 minutes
Short synopsis
Blight revolves around the building of the M11 in East London, using images and sounds of demolition and road building in conjunction with reminiscences of local residents.
Long synopsis
John Smith's thought provoking montage depicts the destruction of a distinctive neighbourhood in East London, in order to make way for the new M11 Cambridge to London motorway extension. In the first few minutes of this film, derelict houses appear to be dismembering themselves, leaving views into the former rooms. Kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms are exposed to the public gaze, accompanied by fragments of memoirs spoken by residents. The rhythmic, evocative soundtrack is partly a collage of these voices and natural sounds, and partly musical, forming the basis of the score, composed by Jocelyn Pook. As the images become gradually more abstract, so does the soundtrack, blurring the distinction between speech and music. Together they create their own stories, transforming the mundane into the mysterious.
Rather than just being a "comment" on the effect of such building works locally, the film broadens to encompass a critique of the London network of motorways of which the M11 is a part, and by implication, the motorway network and car travel as whole.
Background information
About the film
The making of Blight was motivated by personal experience, as Smith's own home would also be destroyed in the process. Smith lets the film speak for itself, conveying it's "message" without any explanatory voice-over. Although the film is constructed from images and sounds of real events in a specific time and place, Blight breaks down the conventional boundaries between documentary and drama. It challenges the common understanding of documentary and experimental forms as mutually exclusive and explores the ambiguities of reality.
About the film-maker
John Smith was born in London, England, in 1952 and studied film at the Royal College of Art. He has become the humorist of avant-garde film, combining forms and devices borrowed from "structural film," a questioning of those devices, and a questioning of film representation itself, with a sometimes-strange psychological edge. By blurring the perceived boundaries of experimental film, fiction and documentary, Smith never delivers what he has led the spectator to expect.
Teaching materials and additional materials
The teaching materials have been developed by practising teachers to provide a springboard for your own work with your students. Feel free to use and adapt them appropriate to your students' needs.
The additional materials, provided by the film-makers, can be used to develop your work with the film and deepen students' understanding of the process of film-making.
