YOKO ONO’s film, SMILE, will be projected on the external facade of MACRO Testaccio (Piazza Orazio Giustiniani, 4), on the evening of October 9, 2010. It is being organized by STUDIO STEFANIA MISCETTI in collaboration with MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, to honor the seventieth anniversary of John Lennon’s birth, and also in conjunction with the Day of Contemporary by AMACI and RomaArt2Nights. The projection of Smile in Rome is one of a number of initiatives occurring around the world, to celebrate the memory of John Lennon and his work for peace. The film, titled Film No. 5 (Smile) was made by Yoko Ono in 1968, using a high-speed recording of John Lennon smiling at their home in London. Yoko Ono has written about the film:

“Last year, I said I’d like to make a ‘smile film’ which included a smiling face snap of every single human being in the world. But that had obvious technical difficulties and was very likely that the plan would have remained as one of my beautiful never-nevers. (…)
They say that in the corner of the world there is a man who sits and spends his life in sending good vibration to the world, and when a star twinkles, we are only catching the twinkle that was sent 1000 light years ago, etc. (…) Imagine a painting that smiles just once in a billion years. John’s ghostly smile in Film No. 5 might just communicate in a hundred year’s time, or maybe, the way the things are rolling, it may communicate much earlier than that. I think all the doors are just ready to open now. One light knock should do. It’s just that there are still a minority group in the world who are afraid of the doorless world to come. They’re just not sure how they can cope with it. But most of us know that doors are just figments of our imagination. The good thing is though, that law of nature that once you know, you can never unknown things, so the doors are going to disappear pretty rapidly, I think”.

Yoko Ono, October 2, 1968

Yoko Ono is a multi-media artist who constantly challenges the traditional boundaries of art. She is known for her groundbreaking conceptual and performance pieces, experimental films and music.