THE PROTAGONIST

Loosely constructed from a collage of literary references, filmic vocabulary, broken-up narratives and improvisations, ‘The Protagonist’ is a work where the construction of a main character for a film is treated as an event for camera, a happening that becomes the film itself.

Shot in two different interiors (an empty cinema and a house-party turning into a karaoke night) and constructed through six interconnected scenes, the film uses the tropes normally associated with the basic shaping of a narrative persona – looks, behaviours, personal details, surroundings etc. – and turns them all into the only available storyline to be followed.
In an empty cinema, two unnamed men discuss the treatment for a possible narrative. Their abstract discussions are continuously interrupted by a second, parallel sequence: the movements and behaviours of a series of men and women abstractly portrayed while drinking, dancing, singing and carelessly chatting during a karaoke party.

The juxtaposition of the two scenes is an open proposal: mere rhythmic punctuation for the previous sequence, it might as well become a cypher for the two men’s unfinished storytelling.

The film never starts, its constant deferral unveiling its basic mechanics, rendering them the only possible matter of interest: a story about the making of a character, about the becoming of a protagonist.

CREDITS

ARTIST Francesco Pedraglio
CAST Mathieu Ziegler, Stefan Kollmuss
CINEMATOGRAPHER Giorgio Bosisio
PRODUCTION Piano Nobile, Geneva

TECH SPECS

>VIDEO ART<

PRODUCTION YEAR 2015
COUNTRY UK, SWITZERLAND
RUNNING TIME 17m:39s
LANGUAGE English