Preliminary research on a living artist

Nicolas Provost is a Belgian video artist whose work (experimental shorts + one feature) seeks to explore the grammar of cinema in ways that bridge the gap between the purely aesthetic experience perhaps derived from video installation art, and the narrative-driven cinema that mainstream audiences of movie theatres routinely enjoy in the millions.  Much of his earlier work is small, abstract, experimental - each film focused, seemingly, on one narrative or cinematographic code that Provost aims to investigate.  However, in 2011, he directed his first feature, The Invader - a narrative-driven film that tells the story of an African man living in Brussels whose life begins to unravel after an affair with a local woman ends unexpectedly.

It is his earlier work - the more abstract shorts - that I will explore as I continue with my research of this artist.  Although not ostensibly interested in The Invader, I want to chart Provost's path from experimental filmmaker to feature-length director, and en route understand a little more about the ways in which he comments on, and manipulates, standard codes and conventions which I - as an amateur filmmaker - have studied as part of my film studies degree program.

Robrecht Vanderbeeken, writing about Provost's loosely-connected trilogy of films set in New York, Las Vegas and Tokyo, commented: "[the artist] plays with the codes of cinema to create visual poems about our reality, more specifically about that with which our experience of reality is permeated: cinema. Not only did we all grow up with the film canon, it is also a window through which we have learned to look at the world. Whether we like it or not, our conditioned gaze is continually focused by the parameters of our collective memory of film. Provost senses this like no one else."  Vanderbeeken's comments are what draw me to Nicolas Provost (the infuriatingly vague term "film canon" notwithstanding), and compelled me to watch The Divers (2006), a 7 minute film that plays with our expectation of cinematic romance.

Vanderbeeken, talking about this film, observes that, "[Provost's] work swells into one big yearning mating dance: the kiss which hangs in the air like a firework cannot be captured."  There is far more that can be said about this piece, and I will analyse it further as part of my final paper.


All material here (except photo of Provost) taken from his website:

http://www.nicolasprovost.com/