One of the most important names in South African art in the postapartheid period, William Kentridge flits easily between video, film, drawing, sculpture, installations, theatre, and opera, producing a unique combination of references and techniques. His work achieved notoriety in the late 1990s and reached Brazil at the Associação Cultural Videobrasil Contemporary African Art Show held in 2000. The documentary inaugurates the Videobrasil Authors Collection (locally VCA) series and follows the artist in Johannesburg and on his sojourn in Brazil, registering his thought and work process. Kentridge speaks of the impact of social contradictions upon his work and the characters that emerge from the animated cartoons produced from his charcoal sketches in a singular process that consists of erasing and redrawing the lines in black and white. Shot in digital video and ultra grainy super-8 stock in an allusion to this process, the work is the portrait of a contemporary artist whose work carries a strong emotional and political charge, though without pamphleteering or coming across as hermetic.
Further info on Videobrasil Authors Collection series available in our website.
