UN JOUR, L'AVENIR NOUS DONNERA RAISON

’Fleuve Congo à Kinshasa’ is the first part of the series ’Un jour l’avenir nous donnera raison’. The artist made this film in collaboration with the anthropologist Filip De Boeck. Forming the border between Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo river is known as a no-go zone. The camera focusses on three protagonists. The first is Michel, a young Kinois boxer. He practises daily in a little area near his school. The other two are the river itself, and the city. In a sequence of single images captured in travelling shots while navigating the Congo, we see Kinshasa – the industry, the markets, the previous colonial buildings, the abandoned places, the neighbouring land, the survival strategies, and so on. In 2004, an early version of the film was shown as part of the Golden Lion-winning exhibition ’Kinshasa, the Imaginary City’, in the Belgian Pavilion at the 9th International Architecture Biennale of Venice and conceived of by Koen Van Synghel, Filip De Boeck and Marie-Françoise Plissart.