TEAM
Abiba Coulibaly – Associate Programmer
Bethany Privitera – Short Courses Programmer
Damilola Lemomu – Guest Services Coordinator
Dylan Elliott – Volunteer Coordinator
Eleanor Lu – Marketing Assistant
Ellis Lee – Technician
Elizabeth Dexter – Associate Programmer / Talk & Workshops Coordinator
Elsie Watkinson – Expanded Realities Technical Producer
Helen Baldwin – Production Manager
Huda Awan – Editor (Open City Texts)
Jack Cunliffe – Guest Services Assistant
Jamila Kabir – Expanded Realities Assistant
Jesse Cumming – Programme Advisor
Jonathan Ali – Associate Programmer
Laurence Avis – UCL Student Showcase Programmer
Laverne Caprice – Marketing Manager
Lucy Brown – Marketing Assistant
Lucy Wardley – Festival Producer / Expanded Realities Programmer
María Palacios Cruz – Festival Director
Marta Calderón – Associate Programmer
Oliver Wright – Director of Programming
Ralph Pritchard – Technical Manager
Siavash Minoukadeh – Associate Programmer / Programme Coordinator / Expanded Realities Programmer
Programme & texts: Jonathan Ali, Laurence Avis, Marta Calderón, Laverne Caprice, Hyun Jin Cho, Abiba Coulibaly, Elizabeth Dexter, Saeed Taji Farouky, William Fowler, Sona Karapoghosyan, Niki Kohandel, Ricardo Matos Cabo, Siavash Minoukadeh, María Palacios Cruz, Beth Privitera, William Rose, Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Lucy Wardley, Ed Webb-Ingall, Oliver Wright.
Branding and Design: GIRL
2026 FESTIVAL TRAILER – ‘The Girl Chewing Gum’ BY JOHN SMITH
Our 2026 Festival trailer marks the 50th anniversary of John Smith’s classic film The Girl Chewing Gum.
“John Smith’s The Girl Chewing Gum is many things: a twelve-minute 16 mm film consisting of only two shots, a testimony to how complexity can arise out of a sparse economy of means, an allegory of cinema, a critique of documentary naturalism, an interrogation of language-image relations, a record of an East London neighbourhood, a classic avant-garde film, an art world hit some thirty-five years after its debut, and more besides.” (Erika Balsom)
Since 1972 John Smith has made over 60 film, video and installation works that have been shown in cinemas, museums and art galleries around the world and awarded major prizes at many international film festivals. Known for their formal ingenuity, subversive wit and oblique storytelling, his films blur the perceived boundaries between documentary, fiction, representation and abstraction, playfully exploring and exposing the language of cinema. Retrospectives of John Smith’s films have been presented at international film festivals in 16 countries. His recent solo exhibitions include Secession, Vienna (2025); Kate MacGarry, London (2025) and Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (2022). Smith received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists in 2011, and in 2013 he was the winner of Film London’s Jarman Award.
Open City Documentary Festival would like to thank:
Alchemy Film & Arts (Rachael Disbury, Michael Pattison), Another Gaze (Daniella Shreir, Laura Staab), Anthology Film Archives (John Mhiripiri, Jed Rapfogel), Armenian Film Society London (Kira Adibekov, Tatevik Ayvazyan), Auguste Orts (Marie Logie, Emma Kraak), Erika Balsom, BAMPFA (Jon Shibata), Barbican (Matthew Barrington, Susie Evans, Rebecca Fons, Vania Gonzalvez, Alex Davidson, David Nago Piqueras), Sam Barry-Parker, Bertha DocHouse (Elizabeth Wood, Jenny Horwell, Max Tindley, Tom Dwyer, Jasmine Haniff, Sean Parnell), BFI (Simon Duffy, Will Fowler, Rod Rhule), British Council (Fiona Fletcher), Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Arman Amirkhanian, Teresa Castro, Shogher Margossian), Close-Up Film Centre (Damien Sanville, Jake Wardle, Will Watt), Courtisane Festival (Pieter-Paul Mortier, Ditte Claus), Neil Cummings, day for night (Sonali Joshi), Diplomatic Representation of Flanders in the UK (Jeroen Deckmyn), Doc Society (Sanne Jehoul, Luke Moody), Juliette Duret, EAI (Karl McCool, Jooyoung Friedman-Buchanan), Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Gareth Evans, Yannis Falconer-Johnson, Saeed Taji Farouky, Films sans frontières (Christophe Camels), FLAMIN (Rose Cupit, Maggie Ellis, Nathan Geyer, Duncan Poulton), Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (Jules Martin, Grazia Quaroni), Elena Gorfinkel, Ian White Estate (Mike Sperlinger), Dimitri Ianni, ICA (Brett Darling, Nic Farnan, Cheyanne McCormack, Nicolas Raffin, Daniel Turner, Hannah Halpern, Steven Cairns), ICO (Catharine des Forges, Hatice Özdemirciler), Inside Lighting (Brendan Clarke, Emma Smith), Instituto Cervantes London, IWAHASHI Momoko, Azazel Jacobs, Sona Karapoghosyan, KOMATSUBARA Tokio, Andrew Lampert, David Leister, Marysia Lewandowska, Light Cone (Miguel Armas, Dalva Deshogues, Eleni Gioti), LUX (Matt Carter, Hanan Coumal, Amel Moyersoen, Sun Park, Charlotte Procter, Ali Roche), New Black Film Collective (Andrina George, Priscilla Igwe), Charlotte Procter, William Rose, Lis Rhodes, Rich Mix (Negede Assefa, Michael Crowe, Max Dickter, Alexander Jackson, Seyi Joseph, Ryan Norris, Wez Thurston), Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Sheffield DocFest (Raúl Niño Zambrano), sixpack (Isabelle Piechaczyk), Lilit Sokhakyan, T A P E Collective (Isra Al Kassi), The Film-Makers’ Cooperative (Julia Petrocelli), Matt Turner, UCL (Athar Ahmad, Richard Alwyn, Laurence Avis, Claire Biagoli, James Bull, Wendy Chandler, Simba Chivaka, Andrea De Santis, Dieter Deswarte, Caroline Garaway, Haidy Geismar, Ruth Harper, Martin Holbraad, Keiko Homewood, Lasse Johansson, Dinah Lammiman, Ed Lawrenson, Angela McArthur, Mailis Merisalu, Tomoyo Miyakawa, Richard Palmer, Lucy Parker, Christopher Pettit-Mee, Bethany Privitera, Spencer Samuel, Michael Stewart), Mark & Frances Webber, Henri Williams, YAMAGAMI Sakiko
We would also like to thank all festival volunteers, all participating filmmakers, artists & speakers.