Christopher Ian Smith

Christopher Ian Smith is a filmmaker writer and visual artist based in London Early in his career he was part of the audiovisual collective Addictive TV which made experimental films and the ITV1 music series Mixmasters and performed at venues including the Centre Pompidou the ICA and Glastonbury Festival He later worked in digital creating applications and campaigns for brands including O2 Guinness PlayStation and Samsung and cofounded EMERGE a symposium on the future of filmmaking in partnership with the Barbican East End Film Festival and Cork Film Festival Since 2012 he has concentrated on moving image work spanning experimental documentary and fiction His feature documentary New Town Utopia 2018 narrated by Jim Broadbent looks at the postwar new town of Basildon through the artists who live there and was released theatrically in the UK The project extended into a book featuring contributions from Jonathan Meades Owen Hatherley and Gillian Darley and a video art installation exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial His other work includes the horror short Unreel 2022 with Zero Hours Unholy Island and The Danse of the Green Man in development He has also directed commercials and branded content for the BBC Disney Dyson LOreal TAG Heuer and Ubisoft