The Hitchcock Tapes

Gravity

The cinematic kiss is probably one of the most archetypical images to be found in film history. Playing with the physiological and cinematographic principle of the after-image, Provost causes dozens of kissing scenes from European and American film classics to collide. The reassuring world of multiplied kisses is shattered by a stroboscopic effect that plunges and looses us into the dizzying vertigo of the embrace where love becomes a passionate battle in which monsters are finally unmasked.

Looking for Alfred

An homage to Alfred Hitchcock in the form of a search for the perfect Hitchcock doppelganger and vignettes starring those multiple would-be Hitchcocks, reenacting his cameos. Casting calls and screen tests in London, Rotterdam, Los Angeles and New York are documented in film stills and photos. (Professional Hitchcock impersonator Rob Burrage says, "I thought I was safe until you guys came along, digging up all those other Hitchcock look-alikes. Now we will have to find ways of disposing of them.") Line-readings from Truffaut's famous 1960s interview with the master and scenes in which Hitchcock acted as an extra are further grist for the mill. Beyond the work's mockumentary structure, Grimonprez evokes the Hitchcockian universe uncannily, and connects back--through the recurring motif of a man in a suit and a bowler hat--to another great modern auteur, Rene Magritte.

Phoenix Tapes

The Phoenix Tapes show re-edited excerpts from 40 films by Alfred Hitchcock. The six chapters focus on a personal selection of various leitmotifx in Hitchcock´s work. The consequence of this is not only to highlight Hitchcock´ s obsessions with certain types of repetitive movements and highly loadedvisual signifiers, but to suggest that these actions are part of auniversal language of gesture that encompasses both cinematic andeveryday modes of communication.” (John Tozer, Camera Austria)