by FilmInk Staff
Fist of Fury was perhaps the first big breakthrough for superstar Bruce Lee. A box office hit on first release in 1972, the plot is a culture clash yarn set in 1910 China. Lee plays a student who incurs the wrath of Japanese martial arts proteges after his own master has been murdered.
In the segregated cinemas of Western Australia’s Noongar community during the 1970s, Fist of Fury had a special meaning, according to Kyle J Morrison.
That’s why Kylie Bracknell elected to do a Noongar language ‘dub’ of Fist of Fury, according to Morrison, an actor in the production, and a director in his own right.
Director, actor and Noongar language activist, Bracknell delivered a TEDx talk in 2014 to raise awareness of Australia’s Indigenous languages.
Based in Perth, Kyle J Morrison has been involved in the stage scene for more than a decade. He was artistic director at the Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company.
“Recently though, I’ve dusted off the eyeliner and just finished a tour with the Bell Shakespeare Co.,” he said.
Fist of Fury is the first film ever dubbed into an Australian language, with Bracknell, Morrison and Clint Bracknell doing the voicing.
The creation of the dub by Boomerang and Spear (Bracknell team branding) was supported by Perth Festival’s Noongar Advisory Circle.
“Noongar language has been part of an opera, a Shakespeare [stage show], now a film,” Morrison said. “We want to revive it not just as a museum piece; we want it to be accessible and hopefully we can get it on a home video format so it can be a language learning tool.”
Hugely entertaining, this Noongar dub is a thrilling experience.
Filmink spoke to Morrison on the eve of the film’s first screening at the Sydney Film Festival.
Tell us about the project?
“Kylie has a real passion for Kung Fu. She has a Chinese grandfather. She has that connection to that culture, and some of those aesthetics and language. She practiced Kung Fu as a younger person. We’ve known each other since we were teenagers. My father and my uncles talked a lot about Bruce Lee movies. Bruce Lee was really big in Noongar society in the 1970s. It wasn’t just big as in niche and beautiful; it was something that wasn’t Anglo, that wasn’t Christian, that wasn’t kind of mainstream. It wasn’t James Bond or Charlton Heston.
“My father told me that Fist of Fury was the first movie he saw that did not have White People in it. He and my uncles would see these Kung Fu movies and then [re-enact them] in the school yard for days! [Laughs].
“Kylie and I talked a lot about that. [In doing this project] She was really vibe-ing on that.”
You and Kylie have worked before?
“We worked together to adapt six of Shakespeare’s sonnets into Noongar, which we presented at the Globe in London in 2012. That was part of the Global Olympiad.”
Lee made a lot of movies and there were other Kung Fu stars…Why Fist of Fury specifically?
“It tells a colonial story. It is about the Japanese Empire [and Lee’s character defends his cultural identity]. I think it had [an unconscious] connection to people who were conquered. It really spoke to Noongar People. The first time they saw it, it would have been dubbed. English would have been tumbling out of the mouths of these Chinese characters. Badly synched!
“Kylie being the firebrand and genius that she is, recognised that this was really meaningful for a whole generation of Noongar men and women in the ‘70s.”
The plot has a lot of to do with cultural pride…
“I mean you can see the difference between how the Japanese characters and Chinese characters treat their characters…The Chinese women had this agency. Women of colour didn’t have that on screen [typically].”
When did the project start?
“I can’t remember exactly. But we were doing the dubbing in November and December last year.”
You play the Bruce Lee part, Chen Zen, in a plot involving honour, and revenge. What was that like?
“I approached it with respect and seriousness. In the original English dub, it was a bit careless, ‘near enough is good enough’, where we were trying to map every word perfectly to the mouth.”
It’s totally convincing and amazing how precisely the language synchs!
“I wanted it to be real. We had real respect for the original Cantonese. Kylie, in the process, spoke Noongar [and gave lots of notes]. It was hard. At one point I had to curl up into a little ball and cry for a bit. But we had to get it right.”
The film debuted at the Perth Film Festival recently, what was that like?
“Everyone [involved with the project] was a little nervous. There are so many ways to get [language] wrong; the accents kind of change from region to region.
“The region we are dealing with [in WA] is the size of Great Britain. So, you can imagine. You can see how accents work in English. We focus on the Ballardong region just east of Perth.
“Eighty per cent of the audience were Noongar or people who had grown up around Noongar.
“A lot of uncles came up and just spoke Noongar. A lot of young people didn’t know what to say… you could say that we had thrown the gauntlet down to the next generation, ‘let’s make our language viable let’s make it strong’.
“I guess that’s the point of the project.”
Fist of Fury Noongar Daa is screening at the 2021 Sydney Film Festival
