John Smith's 'Blight'

I've heard John Smith's 1996 film 'Blight' called a protest film. Protesting against the building of the M11 road into London. Having seen the film today and with the benefit of a few hours of soaking in time, I think that description may be reductive of what really is a piece of art of much wider breadth than that achievable within a political film. Smith's experimental film seems to be more considered than a one sided protest, although one sided it most definitely feels. The director seems to want us to meditate on the wider aspects of the destruction of people's houses in order to further a country's industrialisation. We are shown houses being knocked to the ground along with items that once may have had some pride of place within those houses. We are told in voiceovers of people's sadness that they are having to leave their homes and, most importantly, their memories. Elderly people recount how long they have stayed in their houses. Noises of the chainsaws and hammers destroy those memories so rooted in the souls of the buildings. Repetition is a very strong factor with the sound, being used to force us to re-evaluate what we are hearing every time we do so. However, I feel the stand-out image in the film for me is Smith's use of a shot of leaves on a tree. Smith seems to want us to, through a metaphor for innocence and nature, meditate on how we as human beings have arrived at this situation, industrialisation, bitter fighting over homes and, through use of the spider metaphor, a cycle of dog eat dog mentality in a fast moving cynical and unsentimental world.
Upon first viewing I was not keen on the film, I thought it was too one sided, sentimental and not objective enough. A little of that remains inside me, however I now think that the film has a far more poignant anti-industrialisation 'message'. This meaning is made by Smith's editing of his footage and recordings into something that could almost apply to any situation like this anywhere in the world, or at least the western world. The film for me is very successful in it's 'message' simply because of the grander scale it takes of the issues it so obviously covers. Blight becomes that more poignant because of it's ability to make the audience take a step back to see and confront an almost universal issue. Smith's use of jarring cuts, flash-frames of colour and abrupt sound only go further to intensify an issue that is already a complex and sensitive human matter, demanding the attention of the audience. For the people of the housing estate, the route Smith has taken with his style and structure must feel spot on, akin to their harsh emotional pains and sense of not being able to grasp the situation. For me however there is something that Smith does that stands out from the rest; the grande design or concept of Blight. It is Smith's blending of his own ideas and those of the people of the estate that creates the grander meaning the film delivers. This blending derives from the use of 'factual footage', of the houses and interviews, and the director's use of techniques such as the jarring cuts, repetition, flash-frames and use of 'miscellaneous' shots (the leaves and the 'Exorcist' poster) which avoid abstraction and gather meaning by being surrounded by the grounded 'factual footage'. This combining of formalism, semiotics and realism is, to my mind, what makes the film truly powerful.