"T.I.A. (This is Africa)"
ABOUT THE FILM
Conceived, shot and recorded in 48 hours in Brazzaville (Congo). Choreographer and dancer Aïpeur Foundou, mixes contemporary dancing and traditional Congolese movements. An original poem written by Ronan Chéneau is narrated by Ella Ganga, a Congolese dancer. The dialect used at times is Lari. The river in the film is the River Congo, and Kinshasa can be spotted in the distance on the other bank.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Aïpeur Foundou (Dancer/Choreographer)
Aïpeur started dancing in the streets of Brazzaville in 2007 and then started choreographing in 2009. He has had the opportunity to work with famous African choreographers, like DeLaVallet Bidiefono, Salia Sanou, Andréa Ouamba. He now dances both in Africa and in Europe, and now lives in France, near Paris.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJfOURVYV4el7Tf5-K9VTaw
Matthieu Maunier-Rossi (Filmmaker)
Matthieu Maunier-Rossi is a screenwriter and director, living and working in Paris, France. Geography and travels are at the core of all his projects. From 2014 to 2017, he wandered across the Caribbean, looking for new stories. His journey became a book (« Les îles buissonnières », Ed. Rudbeckias, 2018). After more than one year spent in Haiti working with NGOs, he went back to the island during the summer of 2018 to direct a new fiction film called « Three blades ». That movie is currently playing in festivals around the world.
“Zeutch Magazine” Excerpt
"In October 2013, I worked for a few weeks in Brazzaville. The last two days before my return to Paris, I wanted to shoot a film there with an incredible young Congolese dancer: Aïpeur Foundou. He and I wanted to confront his dance with the reality of Brazzaville. There is a large pool of contemporary dancers and choreographers on site, an effervescence. But the Congolese are not yet used to it, so seeing a dancer intervening like that directly in the street, in the markets, we caused a sensation! Aïpeur mixes contemporary dance with elements of traditional Congolese dances. We imagined the film, traveled the city to find the sets and shot everything in 48 hours with the means at hand. I deliberately placed myself away from him to capture the reactions of the people around, without the camera being immediately noticed.
The text is an original poem that I commissioned from Ronan Chéneau , a French playwright who was in Brazzaville at the same time as us. We recorded it there as well. This theme of freedom came from the discussions we had with the various artists we met in town. This is also why I tried to "wedge" Aïpeur in the frame, by tightening the image around it, even if it sometimes escapes from the frame, that it overflows… I wanted that one feels that he was constrained and that he was trying to make room for himself by dancing… The young woman who recites the text is called Ella Ganga , she is a Congolese actress and dancer. Sentences that are not in French are in Lari, one of the dialects spoken in Brazzaville. The river that we see in the film is the Congo, the entrance to Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". We turned near the Cataracts, where rocks are flush with the surface, making the current furious and navigation impossible. This is what has long blocked the exploration of the Congo in the last century ... Again, this visual opposition between freedom and oppression. "