Associação Cultural Videobrasil

William Kentridge Documentary

Videobrasil is launching the first video of a series on Electronic Art, a collection composed of yearly issues. The first title is on South African artist William Kentridge, one of the names present at the Contemporary African Art Show in São Paulo, and is sponsored by the Prince Claus Fund. The idea is to show the work, the creative process and routine of an artist, through the eyes of a documentary filmmaker specially chosen for the event, who will sign the film. The documentary will be distributed to museums, schools, media centres and television. Contrary to traditional documentaries, which in general adopt the format of interviewing the artist interspersing images of the work, the films of this series intend to be creative and innovative in relation to the language employed. For this first work, the chosen documentary film maker is Alex Gabassi. Born in 1967, Gabassi is a documentary director, having worked in this format in programmes such as "Red Hot + Rio" for the New York based Red Hot Organization and the series "MTV Na Estrada", for MTV Brasil, when he took the road with musicians in their tours throughout Brazil. Alex Gabassi spent ten days with Kentridge in his Johannesburg house. During that time, Gabassi was with the artist in his studio, visited the landscapes depicted in Kentridge’s works, interviewed collaborators, made a trip to Kentridge’s small farm and accompanied him to Grahamstown for a lecture on Tiepolo. Gabassi account of this filming period follows below. In São Paulo, he accompanied the South African artist during the entire exhibition set up period, recording his relationship with space, with the public and the other artists, and explored the differences and similarities between São Paulo and Kentridge’s native Johannesburg. The film presents images of these two moments.

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL and SESC SÃO PAULO, "Contemporary African Art Show", pp. 94, São Paulo, Brazil, 2000.

DVD bonus + about the artist + about the director Bonus The documentary includes a making-of of the mounting of "Screensaver", an installation commissioned by Associação Cultural Videobrasil and created in São Paulo, in which projections transform the windows of a car into an unexpected aquarium in which fish of various colours swim about. As Kentridge reminds us, the image creates a certain ambiguity: are we seeing water or a virtual backdrop, like a computer screensaver? The artist William Kentridge was born in 1955 and grew up in the white suburbs of a divided nation, far from the European/U.S. axis. A descendent of Lithuanian and German Jews, he hails from a liberal environment critical of the apartheid regime. He is a graduate in the fine arts and African studies. Geographic isolation contributed to his choice of drawing as a medium, which he felt was dissociated from the movements in painting with which he could not identify. Kentridge's work is marked by personal and social issues. Though his references to his country's history are constant, they are never explicit: politics emerges out of personal torment, guilt, and doubt. His traces and approach have been compared to those of the expressionists, like the German Otto Dix. The director Producer and independent director, Alex Gabassi was assistant director and stage manager at the London-based physical theatre company Theâtre de Complicité. He has produced installations and an exhibition of the work of American artist Bill Viola for the Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival (1992). He has also directed series and specials for MTV Brasil and made music videos for Marisa Monte, Caetano Veloso, David Byrne, and Carlinhos Brown. Also in the Videobrasil Authors Collection series, he has directed the documentary "Akram Zaatari: A Glimpse of One Man's Vision" (2004) and codirected "Rafael França: Work as Testament" (2001). He is the director of a documentary entitled "About a Name" (2001) and various advertising films.

An account of filmmaker Alex Gabassi " ‘The idea of having you here filming my routine for ten days makes me run for cover.’ That’s how William Kentridge answered my first e-mail. Of course, I’d run too: how am I supposed to relate to a fellow who doesn’t speak my language properly and comes from a country we barely hear from on the news? What does he want? Well, you know William, I didn’t know either. That doubt soon vanished as Kentridge, on the first day of our meeting, invites me to his small farm. " Not knowing his work in depth, and having only ten days to get used to the man and the place, I decided to observe his routine, not interfering much, listening to the birds outside his studio and his heavy breathing. ‘God, such a good microphone this is.’ "We visited Kentridge’s small farm, where we spent Sunday speaking of Brazil and the influence of South Africa’s landscape on his work. On asking about the absence of colours in his drawings and remarking that confronted with such gorgeous countryside landscape that was a pity, he answered that what interested him was line, the lines of the landscape, the lines against the sky. "In the small farm we had a few conversations, nothing very deep. I think we were studying one another. Kentridge is very discrete. One who answers your questions and suddenly dives into deep silence as if wanting to be hit by a light of inspiration, some music fading in or simply my next question, I don’t know, perhaps he just gets bored! Well, that suits me fine, since I have time to frame him properly and check if the batteries of the camera are still okay. I showed an image in which Sam, his son, could be seen through the bushes by his side during a recorded interview. He was touched. I think that this image, in a certain way, set the tone for the documentary. That’s where we connected! "Next day we made an appointment for 10 a.m. at his house. The address was 72, Houghton Road. ‘Have you seen "Stereoscope"?’ ‘Yes...’ ‘When you come to a house with gates where two metal black cats sit (looking as if they were electrocuted), you have arrived...’ "The streets are lined with numerous trees, and I discover that most trees are not native but instead from Australia. ‘Mind you, they haven’t been there for more than a hundred years’, tells me William, ‘it looks very much like São Paulo.’ Something clicks and tells me nothing is very natural in this part of Jo'Burg. ‘Yes, William, this may look like São Paulo, but where are the people in the streets?’ "Kentridge was working with paper cut-outs. They are torn pieces of black card he assembles, transforming his characters. It is a mix of collage and Chinese shadow theatre. These characters, as well as the majority of his recent works, integrate a series he calls "Shadow Procession"’. They are paper cut-outs pasted to pages of an old Larousse Encyclopaedia or of old atlases, sculptures (which are scattered all around the studio) and a version of a 19th century object called "phenakistiscope". For three days we busied ourselves with the cut-outs and visits to the Artists Press, the place where most of Kentridge’s lithos are printed. "William spent hours retouching little shadow characters in the Artist Press and the only thing I could think of was: ‘What shitty light this place has, someone should blow up all the fluorescent light factories’. ‘So, William, is there anyone that I could talk to, your collaborators, to get to know you a bit better?’ "I needed more people in this documentary. I need to extract some emotion, some irreverent commentary about William. How can one make art so engaging, profound and full of symbolisms and yet so cerebral? ‘What inspires you, William? What drives you?’ ‘ I don't believe in inspiration, Alex.’ ‘But, what about the transformations, the drawings, there's some intuitive element in there, is there not?’ "My feet froze every night and, in spite of the experience of having lived in London, it was only in Jo'Burg that I came to know that it is best to place the heater near the feet, and not near the head. "June 28. Kentridge’s garden, about lunchtime. William’s friends arrive. "In spite of being winter the sun was strong. I think Brazil is roughly on the same line as South Africa, in the map. Maybe they are a bit lower. In Jo'burg, it is sunny during the day and icy during the night. "The sun was shining and I interviewed Angus Gibson, editor of Kentridge’s first films. ‘Yes, there was a first film that I remember, "Sales Talk", I believe was called. People dismissed that, but I saw some genius in it. William was doing theatre at the time… I remember someone in the editing room saying: I pity this guy, Kentridge. I think he will never find a place for himself. He is doing many things and nothing. You see, I think he's good in all of it. His art is an amalgam of all those arts, film, theatre, sculpture...’ Yes, Angus, it was good, but not enough. "Jane Taylor wrote "Ubu and The Truth Commission" with William. Oh God! She's bright… and clear. Another one. Jane is the kind of person with whom you want to spend hours drinking and philosophising . ‘What's the first word you associate with William, Jane?’ ‘Loss.’ Hmmmm, this is a word I will keep. "Back to the dinner table. ‘Is everybody here? What's the first image of Brazil that comes to your mind? Soccer... music’, asks Phillip, composer of many soundtracks in Kentridge’s films. ‘The architecture, the wide roads, the self enclosed condominiums, the Jacaranda trees’, says William. ‘I fear and I hope that São Paulo is what Jo'burg will be in five years time. I hope that South Africa, one day, will be what Brazil is today.’ Everybody agrees. "Yes, a colourful country that is."

ASSOCIAÇÃO CULTURAL VIDEOBRASIL and SESC SÃO PAULO, "Contemporary African Art Show", pp. 95-97, São Paulo, Brazil, 2000.

Launches, exhibitions and archives - "Certain Doubts of William Kentridge" launches: 2001_ - Usina do Gasômetro (Sala P. F. Gastal), Porto Alegre - Mostra de Vídeo Itaú Cultural, Belo Horizonte 2000_ - Contemporary African Art Show, Associação Cultural Videobrasil, Cine SESC, São Paulo exhibitions: 2007_ - Videobrasil Coleção de Autores, IBRACO, Colombia 2006_ - Videobrasil Authors Collection Retrospective, Unidade Provisória SESC Avenida Paulista, São Paulo - 1º Dockanema - Festival do Filme Documentário, Maputo, Moçambique - Arte e História em Documento, Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste, Fortaleza - Arte em vídeo: a expressão por imagens em movimento, Videoteca PUC-SP, São Paulo - Shoot Me Film Festival, Den Haag, Holland - VCA na Bahia, Dimas - FUNCEB, Salvador - Videobrasil Colección de Autores, La Diferencia, Colombia 2005_ - TV Chapada, Canal 13 - Le Plateau, Frac Ile-de-France, France - Video/economy – Distributions in Global Format, ZKM, Germany 2004_ - 45º Festival dei Popoli, Firenze, Italy 2003_ - Ciclo de Cortos, FUNCEB, Buenos Aires 2002_ - Itinerância Videobrasil 2002 - SESC São Paulo - Mostra Itinerante Videobrasil 2002: SESC Arsenal, Cuiabá - Vídeo em Debate 2002 - Produção, Pesquisa e Circuitos, Museu Victor Meirelles, Florianópolis - XX Festival International du Film Sur L'Art, Quebec, Canada - XXVI Festival International du Film D'Art et Pédagogique, Paris, France 2001_ - Sessão da Tarde - Retrospectiva Videobrasil no Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo - Paço das Artes, São Paulo - Mostra Vídeo - abril 2001, Itaú Cultural, Belo Horizonte 2000_ - Programa "ZOOM", TV Cultura archives: - Associação de Amigos do Centro Universitário MariAntonia USP archive, São Paulo, Brazil - CCA - The Center for Contemporary Art archive, Tel Aviv, Israel - Fundação Japão archive, São Paulo, Brazil - Hong Kong Arts Centre archive, Hong Kong - Instituto de Artes da UNICAMP library, Campinas-SP, Brazil - International Short Film Festival Oberhausen archive, Germany - Itaú Cultural media library, São Paulo, Brazil - Le Plateau media library, Frac Ile-de-France, France - Maria Braz library (SESI/FIESP), São Paulo, Brazil - Public schools libraries: EE Madre Paulina, EMEF Antônio Carlos de Andrada e Silva, EE Condessa Filomena Matarazzo, Centro Municipal de Educação Adamastor, Diretoria de Ensino Leste 1, Coordenadoria de Educação Ermelino Matarazzo, Coordenadoria de Educação de São Miguel/Jardim Helena, Coordenadoria de Educação de São Miguel/Vila Jacuí, Coordenadoria de Educação de São Miguel/São Miguel Paulista, São Paulo - Videobrasil Archive in Paço das Artes, São Paulo (from 2001 to 2003), São Paulo, Brazil - Videobrasil Archive in PUC Minas, CEIS - Centro de Experimentação em Imagem e Som, Belo Horizonte-MG, Brazil