London-based artist filmmaker John Smith has won this year’s Film London Jarman Award, the annual award, inspired by the work of Derek Jarman. Smith will receive £10,000 and a film commission for Channel 4’s short-form arts strand, Random Acts.
Smith, who studied film at the RCA in the 1970s, has made over 40 films, video and installation works which draw on everyday life, structuralist and minimalist ideas, narrative and the language of cinema, including his influential 1976 film The Girl Chewing Gum. The other shortlisted artists are Ed Atkins, Emma Hart and Rachel Maclean, who will also be commissioned for Random Acts this year.