Le Kung Fu follows the story of Dieudonné Niangouna’s childhood in the Congo of the 70s and 80s, a time when cinema, although there was a dearth of it available to the public, was for the Congolese director and author a powerful connection between his personal artistic path, his family history and the construction of speech infused with cinematographic fiction. From Kung Fu movies and popular flicks to art house films, cinema for him was a way to create an identity, to become the word in action, even leading him to theatre. What remains from this experience is the urgency of writing, a practice the author defends as necessarily dispersible with time – ephemeral theatre then, the creation of images, equally fleeting, indissociable from directing and going from word to deed, on stage. This urgency as well as the memory that it constructs is something Dieudonné Niangouna has shared with the residents of Aubervilliers who have joined this project by acting out scenes from their favourite, cult classic films. From there, several stories are interwoven, multiple geographies overlap and the very question of each person’s identity arises.

Le Kung Fu was created in les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers last June after several months of an artistic and writing residence. The book Le Kung Fu was published in September by Solitaires Intempestifs.

Tour:
13, 14 June: Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (France)
6, 7 November: Théâtre des Salins (Martigues, France)
15, 16 November: Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Francfort, Germany)
19, 20, 21 November: Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (France)
20, 21 January 2015: Théâtre de Bonlieu (Annecy)
February 2015: Théâtre de Vidy-Lausanne (Switzerland)

Image: Christophe Raynaud de Lage, Le Kung Fu (Aubervilliers, June 2014)

With the support of the Région Île-de-France