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Ben Smithard

Birthplace:
USA

Biography from TheMovieDB

Ben Smithard, B.S.C., is a British cinematographer known for his work on period pieces, such as the films The Damned United (2009), My Week with Marilyn (2011), Goodbye Christopher Robin, The Man Who Invented Christmas (both 2017), Blinded by the Light and Downton Abbey (both 2019).  In television, Smithard served as cinematographer on the 2007 BBC One series Cranford (2007). He returned for the subsequent series Return to Cranford in 2009, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography. In 2012, Smithard received a nomination for Best Cinematography in a Television Drama by the British Society of Cinematographers for his work on the "Henry IV, Part I" and "Henry IV, Part II" episodes of the BBC Two series The Hollow Crown.

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Additional information:

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Film Production

"A" Camera Operator:
2019  Blinded by the Light
2019  Downton Abbey

Camera Operator:
2017  Viceroy's House
2019  Blinded by the Light
2019  Downton Abbey
2020  The Father

Cinematography:
2006  The Queen of Sheba
2017  Viceroy's House
2019  Blinded by the Light
2019  Downton Abbey
2020  The Father
2023  Freud's Last Session

Director of Photography:
2006  Glastonbury
2006  The Queen of Sheba
2009  Freefall
2009  The Damned United
2011  My Week with Marilyn
2011  The Trip
2012  I, Anna
2013  Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa
2013  Belle
2015  Roald Dahl's Esio Trot
2015  The Dresser
2015  The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
2017  Goodbye Christopher Robin
2017  The Man Who Invented Christmas
2017  Viceroy's House
2018  King Lear
2019  Blinded by the Light
2019  Downton Abbey
2020  The Father
2022  The Bubble
2022  The Son
2023  Allelujah
2023  Freud's Last Session

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TV Production

Director of Photography:
2002  Spooks
2007  Cranford
2009  The Day of the Triffids
2012  True Love
2021  The Nevers

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About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

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Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.