The Girl Chewing Gum | |
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Directed by | John Smith |
Release date |
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Running time | 12 minutes |
Country | UK |
Language | English |
The Girl Chewing Gum is a 1976 British short film directed by John Smith. [1] [2] [3]
The film, made as the ideological opposition to mainstream cinema, [4] [5] was inspired by a scene in François Truffaut's 1973 film Day for Night in which the director gives instructions to the actors, and even tells a dog to urinate on a lamppost. [6] [7]
At Stamford Road in Dalston Junction of east London, the camera follows pedestrians, cars and birds while a narrator, who appears to be the (fictional) director behind the camera, seems to direct their actions. [8] [9] [10] [11]
The film is widely acknowledged as one of the most important avant-garde films of the 20th century. [12]
The Girl Chewing Gum was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2019. [13]
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director, despite five nominations.
François Roland Truffaut was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic, widely regarded as one of the founders of the cinematic French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry.
Sir Steve Rodney McQueen is a British film director, film producer, screenwriter, and video artist. Known for directing films that deal with intense subject matters, he has received several awards including an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and a Golden Globe Award. He was honoured with the BFI Fellowship in 2016 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2020 for services to art and film. In 2014, he was included in Time magazine's annual Time 100 list of the "most influential people in the world".
Jean-Pierre Léaud, ComM is a French actor best known for being an important figure of the French New Wave and his portrayal of Antoine Doinel in a series of films by François Truffaut, beginning with The 400 Blows (1959). He has worked with Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Rivette, as well as other notable directors such as Jean Cocteau, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Jerzy Skolimowski, and Aki Kaurismäki.
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often credited with providing the ideas that led to the development of the auteur theory.
Day for Night is a 1973 romantic comedy-drama film co-written and directed by François Truffaut. The metafictional and self-reflexive film chronicles the troubled production of a melodrama, and the various personal and professional challenges of the cast and crew. It stars Jacqueline Bisset, Valentina Cortese, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Dani, Alexandra Stewart, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Truffaut himself.
The New Wave, also called the French New Wave, is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of iconoclasm. New Wave filmmakers explored new approaches to editing, visual style, and narrative, as well as engagement with the social and political upheavals of the era, often making use of irony or exploring existential themes. The New Wave is often considered one of the most influential movements in the history of cinema.
Adrian Lyne is an English film director. Lyne is known for sexually charged narratives, conflicting passions, the power of seduction, moral ambiguity, betrayal, and the indelibility of infidelity.
Day for night is a set of cinematic techniques used to simulate a night scene while filming in daylight. It is often employed when it is too difficult or expensive to actually film during nighttime. Because both film stocks and digital image sensors lack the sensitivity of the human eye in low light conditions, night scenes recorded in natural light, with or without moonlight, may be underexposed to the point where little or nothing is visible. This problem can be avoided by using daylight to substitute for darkness. When shooting day for night, the scene is typically underexposed in-camera or darkened during post-production, with a blue tint added. Additional effects are often used to heighten the impression of night.
Shoot the Piano Player is a 1960 French New Wave crime drama film directed by François Truffaut that stars Charles Aznavour as the titular pianist with Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, and Michèle Mercier as the three women in his life. It is based on the novel Down There by David Goodis.
John Smith is a British avant garde filmmaker and professor of Fine Art based in London. His work has been noted for his use of humour in exploring various themes that often play upon the film spectator's conditioned assumptions of the medium and he is therefore often associated with Structural film.
Néstor Almendros Cuyás, ASC was a Spanish cinematographer. One of the most highly appraised contemporary cinematographers, "Almendros was an artist of deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light...he will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute truth...a true master of light".
Danièle Graule, known as Dani, was a French actress and singer.
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1966 British dystopian drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, and Cyril Cusack. Based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury, the film takes place in a controlled society in an oppressive future, in which the government sends out firemen to destroy all literature to prevent revolution and thinking. This was Truffaut's first colour film and his only non French-language film. At the 27th Venice International Film Festival, Fahrenheit 451 was nominated for the Golden Lion.
The Wild Child is a 1970 French film by director François Truffaut. Featuring Jean-Pierre Cargol, François Truffaut, Françoise Seigner and Jean Dasté, it tells the story of a child who spends the first eleven or twelve years of his life with little or no human contact. It is based on the true events regarding the child Victor of Aveyron, reported by Dr. Jean Marc Gaspard Itard. The film sold nearly 1.5 million tickets in France.
The Last Metro is a 1980 period drama film, co-written and directed by François Truffaut, that stars Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu.
Suzanne Schiffman was a French screenwriter and director for numerous motion pictures. She often worked with François Truffaut. The 'script girl' Joelle, played by Nathalie Baye in Truffaut's Day for Night was based on Schiffman. It accurately portrayed her close collaboration with Truffaut and other directors.
The 27th British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTAs, took place on 6 March 1974 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, honouring the best national and foreign films of 1973. Presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, accolades were handed out for the best feature-length film and documentaries of any nationality that were screened at British cinemas in 1973.
Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson, known professionally as Michaela Coel, is a British actress, filmmaker and poet. She is best known for creating and starring in the E4 sitcom Chewing Gum (2015–2017), for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance; and the BBC One/HBO comedy-drama series I May Destroy You (2020) for which she won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress in 2021. For her work on I May Destroy You, Coel was the first black woman to win the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards.
Hitchcock/Truffaut is a 1966 book by François Truffaut about Alfred Hitchcock, originally released in French as Le Cinéma selon Alfred Hitchcock.