Tokyo Giants Extract by Nicolas Provost

After New York (Plot Point, 2007) and Las Vegas (Stardust, 2010) Belgian filmmaker and visual artist Nicolas Provost takes his hidden camera to the hyperkinetic streets of Tokyo. Subverting dramaturgical conventions in his Plot Point trilogy, Provost presents the man in the street as a film protagonist and employs the grammar of suspense – a twist of self-filmed images together with dialogues and sound from well-known films or television series are schematically and rhythmically coordinated into a cinematic language. In other words, the scenes in Tokyo Giants are not staged, but situations encountered by Provost in situ. A serial killer, a rapist, a terrorist, a cult, the Yakuza, all have in common that their paths cross and merge into a powerful climax that can not be resolved. Provost masterfully shows that fiction and reality are two parallel realities that influence one another and can not be detached from one another.

Video projection with sound, 22′, 2012. Courtesy Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp.

Tokyo Giants is on view now at the BePart exhibition until May 15th, Be-Part, Waregem, Belgium.

Cast: The Citizens & Visitors of Tokyo, Johan Rooms, Miet Warlop

Cinematography, editing, sound design: Nicolas Provost

Sound Mix: Senjan Jansen

Producer: Nicolas Provost Supported by The Flanders Audiovisual Fund

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