Nick Gordon Smith

Movies

Brothers by Blood
Producer
Peter and Michael, raised on the streets of Philadelphia, are the children of Irish mob members, forever linked by the crimes of their fathers. 30 years later, Michael now runs the criminal organization and lusts for more power, his dangerous antics frequently held in check by his cautious cousin Peter. Haunted by the death of his sister, whose passing destroyed both his parents, Peter is caught between the dreams of childhood and the realities of his life as an enforcer. His only reprieve is a local boxing gym, a sanctuary that is quickly threatened as Michael’s desire for control escalates.
What Can You See?
Cinematography
A video postcard: "Ubi amor ibi oculus" ("Where love is, there is insight").
The Souvenir
"B" Camera Operator
A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.
I Hope I'm Loud When I'm Dead
Director of Photography
Reframing our current political moment in intimate terms, Gibson’s urgent snapshot of worldwide social calamities doubles as a document of practical resistance. In Gibson’s hands, the music of Pauline Oliveros and the words of poets CA Conrad and Eileen Myles imbue images of street riots, the Grenfell Fire, and the mass refugee migration with complexity and grace.
Fever Hospital
Director
Historical voices and images relay the experiences of tuberculosis, Knightwick Sanatorium and London Fever Hospital.
F for Fibonacci
Cinematography
F for Fibonacci is a new film that takes as its departure point American author William Gaddis’ epic modernist novel JR (1975). An eerily prescient, biting social satire, JR tells the story of a precocious 11 year-old capitalist who, with the unwitting help of his school’s resident composer, inadvertently creates the single greatest virtual empire the world has seen, spun largely from the anonymity of the school’s pay phone. F for Fibonacci develops a particular episode from JR, in which a televised music lesson is scrambled with a maths class on derivatives inside the mind of its child protagonist. Musings on aleatory music become muddled with virtual stock pickings and a theory of ‘market noise’. Unfolding through the modular machine aesthetics of the video game Minecraft, text book geometries, graphic scores, images from physics experiments, and cartoon dreams, blend with images from wall street: stock market crashes, trading pits, algorithms and transparent glass.
Abandoned Goods
Cinematography
Abandoned Goods is an essay film exploring the journey of one of Britain’s major collections of Asylum Art containing about 5,500 objects (paintings, drawings, ceramics, sculptures and works on stone, flint and bone) created between 1946 and 1981, by about 140 people compelled to live in the Netherne psychiatric hospital in South London. Blending archive, reconstruction, animation, 35mm rostrum, and observational photography, the film explores the transformation of these objects from clinical material to revered art objects examining the lives of the creators and the changing contexts in which the objects were produced and displayed.
Swandown
Cinematography
Director Andrew Kötting and writer Iain Sinclair sail a swan-shaped pedalo from Hastings to Hackney in London in the build-up to the 2012 Olympic Games.
Artefact #5: Swandown – Culled from a Waterbound Journey from Hastings to Hackney
Cinematography
Each piece was edited from material that was from the SWANDOWN shoot and named Artefacts 1-5.
Artefact #4: Swandown – Culled from a Waterbound Journey from Hastings to Hackney
Cinematography
Each piece was edited from material that was from the SWANDOWN shoot and named Artefacts 1-5.
Artefact #3: Swandown – Culled from a Waterbound Journey from Hastings to Hackney
Cinematography
Each piece was edited from material that was from the SWANDOWN shoot and named Artefacts 1-5.
Artefact #2: Swandown – Culled from a Waterbound Journey from Hastings to Hackney
Cinematography
Each piece was edited from material that was from the SWANDOWN shoot and named Artefacts 1-5.
Artefact #1: Swandown – Culled from a Waterbound Journey from Hastings to Hackney
Cinematography
Each piece was edited from material that was from the SWANDOWN shoot and named Artefacts 1-5.
Agatha
Cinematography
A psychosexual sci-fi about a planet without speech. Its narrator, ambiguous in gender and function, weaves us slowly through a mental and physical landscape, observing and chronicling a space beyond words. Based on a dream had by the radical British composer Cornelius Cardew.
The Tiger's Mind
Cinematography
An abstract crime thriller set against the backdrop of a brutalist villa. Six characters, the set, the music, the foley, the special effects, the narrator and the author battle one another for control of the film as it unfolds on screen. The film explores the relationships between these characters as they emerge and unfold: grappling, wrestling, and dreaming with one another. The film's production elements were produced - employing the character-driven improvisational score The Tiger's Mind, by Cornelius Cardew - by Alex Waterman as Tree (foley), Jesse Ash as Wind (special effects), John Tilbury as Mind (soundtrack), Celine Condorelli as Tiger (props), Will Holder as Amy (narrator) and Beatrice Gibson as the Circle (author).
7lives
Cinematography
A disgruntled married man called Tom believes that there is a better life for him out there somewhere. On his way home one night he gets attacked and falls into a parallel world where he lives 6 other lives including a Rock-Star, A homeless person and the 'hoody' that attacked him. These lives help him to re-evaluate his priorities and values but in order to get home he must face some of his deepest fears and desires. Will he make it home or is the grass greener on the other side?
Ivul
Cinematography
IVUL is the extraordinary story of Alex (Jacob Auzanneau), a young man who climbs on to the roof of his house and refuses to ever come back down to earth. His actions devastate his beloved family and we watch as their world falls apart. A dark and mysterious gardener (Tchili from This Filthy Earth) keeps watch over the family but is powerless to exorcise the curse that he feels has befallen them. Meanwhile the twin sisters (Manon and Capucine) provide light but sometimes macabre relief. The world of IVUL is a world of both fairytale and nightmare with the family manor house and forest landscape providing a compelling backdrop to the story.
The Full Monteverdi
Director of Photography
The Full Monteverdi follows the simultaneous break-up of six couples, from shocking revelation, vengeful anger and erotic longing for reconciliation, as an ensemble film. Vulnerable and disarming, it draws viewers into its emotional journey and intensely moving portrait of contemporary love.
Polly II - Plan for a Revolution in Docklands
Cinematography
Set in the flooded ruins of a dystopian East London, POLLY II: PLAN FOR A REVOLUTION IN DOCKLANDS draws on references to soap opera, science fiction, satire and Brechtian ‘Lehrstueck’. It alludes to Polly, 1728, John Gay’s censored sequel to the popular Beggar’s Opera, 1727, which resurrected the character of the robber Macheath in the disguise of the African pirate captain Morano, scheming to take revenge on a colony in the West Indies, and is populated by many of the characters made popular by Gay and Brecht. The film features the naïve and incorruptible Polly, the vengeful whore Jenny Diver, and the treacherous and greedy Peachum – fencer, thief-taker and king of the beggars – and portrays them surviving in a lawless zone, set to be redeveloped into luxury waterside living, as a comment on the social struggles against gentrification and privatisation.
One for the Road
Director of Photography
One for the Road follows Jimmy, Paul, Richard and Mark who meet on a rehabilitation course for drink drivers. Jimmy is young, ambitious and desperate to sell his late father's business; Paul has been salesman of the year three times running, however, that was five years ago; Richard is a retired millionaire property developer and Mark is a taxi driver with a weakness for weed and philosophy.
This Filthy Earth
Director of Photography
The tragic story of two sisters whose lives are disrupted by two men. Amidst a landscape of rural hardship and a community consumed with superstition, events unfurl which threaten their sibling bond.
Diddyköy
Director
An ironic yet reverential view of a Gypsy horse fair in the 'wilds' of the English countryside