Belgian film maker Nicolas Provost’s technically outstanding shorts tackle head-on an array of themes ranging from isolation and otherness to the enchantment of cinema and the power of what he calls “dream logic.” His recent short, Long Live the New Flesh—an electric and unrelenting collage of digitally manipulated horror films—had Wheel gleefully squirming in our seats at the recent Berlin film festival, while just down the road, the Haunch of Venison gallery was holding a solo exhibition of his experimental films. Wheel caught up with Provost enjoying a rare few weeks rest at his home in Brussels, before embarking on the making of his first feature.

By Ananda Pellerin

What’s your first feature film about? It’s a story about one of the thousands of illegal African immigrants that come to Europe to find paradise and, of course, everything goes wrong, so he takes the law into his own hands. It’s not a sentimental portrait of immigration – this is just a background to tell the story of a man looking for his place in the world. I wrote it for Isaka Sawadogo, an actor from Burkina Faso who I worked with on earlier short films Exoticore and Induction.

I've been inspired by classic American antihero movies such as Taxi Driver and Bad Lieutenant, where it’s the outsider against society and also where the cosmopolitan city plays a big character. I’m going to try to do that with Brussels because I think it’s very cinematic but hasn’t been used yet.

What attracts you to the idea of the outsider? I only recently realised that I’ve always felt like an outsider, which I know sounds pretentious, but even as a child I looked at the world differently. I also lived for 10 years in Norway and I never managed to integrate 100 per cent. I always felt like a foreigner.

'Surrender' from Exoticore

How did you meet Sawadogo? I saw him on the TV News in Oslo. He’d also been there 10 years, struggling as an actor. They were reporting on the The Full Monty musical and he came out of the audition where he didn’t get the part, but he just walked towards the camera singing, and he was so positive, so charming, I knew this was the man. I called him and made an appointment in a bar. After we talked for 10 minutes he gave me his hand and said “you can do whatever you want with me.” He trusted me completely. We made Exoticore in 11 days with 3000 euros and he did everything in one take because he’s so natural.

Up until now you've made short art or experimental films. Do you want your feature to appeal to a broader audience? My intention is not to make an art film. I’m trying to make something that is accessible to everyone, but we’ll see what happens.

What inspires your work? I’m in love with cinema. It gave me so much while I was growing up, I feel like I have to give something back. I sculpt movies together using film codes and by playing with our collective film memory. We’re all raised with storytelling and so, intuitively, we all know how it functions, and by playing with these parameters I’m reminding people of how great cinema is and why we’re so obsessed with storytelling.

still from Long Live the New Flesh

Long Live the New Flesh explores the horror genre by digitally altering everything from psychological thrillers to out-and-out gorefests. Where did the idea come from? It started from this effect you get when your DVD breaks and the image pixelates. I wanted to have this effect under control because sometimes these errors are pure visual magic. I discovered how to control the technique, and, coincidentally, the first image I worked with was the last scene of Videodrome. I realised it would be quite a challenge to make horror images so beautiful that they transcended the horror.

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