A visual love letter to NYC playground basketball
From K1X and French photographer/streetball documentarist Kévin Couliau comes a beautiful video for Red Cafe’s track “Heart & Soul” that doubles as an ode to the mecca of basketball, New York City.
The clip features action from K1X affiliated tournaments in Harlem (“Together We Chill” and “Kingdome Classic”) and the Lower East Side (“Lower Manhattan Classic”), but it would do the film injustice to dismiss it as just another commercial for a sneaker company.
It is far more than that, it’s NYC streetball in a nutshell: We are introduced to some of the protagonists of the Big Apple’s basketball scene and its courts (“The Cage” and “Goat Park”, among others). Couliau’s camera accurately captures each playground’s unique “personality”, and by embedding the action into images of the locals, the nightlife, subway stations, traffic and corner stores, we are reminded that New York streetball is simply inseparable from the city, its people and history (such as 9/11, symbolized by a fire station).
And while the scenes of heated battle have a distinctly rough feel to them, Pete Rock’s soothing beat of “Heart & Soul” calms everything down, like the evening breeze that cools your feet when you finally take off those sneakers after hours on the court on a hot summer day.
Make sure to check out Kévin’s “Asphalt Chronicles” for more of his work.