Film work of South Africa (programme from the performance)
Kentridge Draws Films for Adult Audiences (MF Dnes)




Film work of South Africa

(May 21 and 22, 1998)

Animated Films of William Kentridge
This time William Kentridge arrives in person to present himself in his original profession- that of filmmaker. Czech Film director and visual artist, Michaela Pavlátová, steers the discussions and films over the course of the evening.

Apartheid
Priest, political prisoner, art theoretician, and director of the Cape Town Film Festival, James Polley, presents the film documentary about the fresh history of South Africa.





Kentridge Draws Films for Adult Audiences

The South African is indebted to the dreams of his two main heroes from his animated films that he personally presented on Thursday at the Archa Theatre in Prague. Although Kentridge is known here as a theatre director, thanks to the theatre pieces Woyzek and Faustus in Africa (which Archa also presented), his animated film made him famous in the last years especially in visual art area.
          "Soho Eckstein shopping always dressed in striped dress, he appeared me in the dream as a ready character. But from Felix Teitlebaum, I had just his name," Kentridge describes the birth of his heroes. "If I would rent a model drawing Teitlebaum according it, perhaps I wouldn´t paid off. Namely, I am not a great painter. So I used a mirror," Kentridge tries to reduce a likeness among drawing Felix Teitlebaum personifying a melancholic observer of the world in the film, and his person. "And why Felix is naked in the all films? Soho Eckstein, who audience perceives as a ravenous capitalist, he seemed me already dressed. I had to think Teitlebaum up and I didn´t prove to draw him a fair dress."
          Political hidden meaning of Kentridge films was certainly one of the reason, why the very them represented South Africa on Kassel´s festival of contemporary visual art Documenta and why their authors became - besides Lorna Simpson, Douglas Gordon, Bul Lee and Huang Yong Ping - one of the five candidates of prize proclaimed by Guggenheim museum in New York, which Hugo Boss finances by sum of fifty thousand dollars. But also the special technique, by which the films are crated is not irrelevant. Namely several charcoal´s paintings with the size one hundred and sixty centimeters for one hundred and twenty centimeters are the way out. For creating of moving illusion, Kentridge always rubs out the part of painting and draws over and changes he records by camera. That is why the films are more robust, fuller and they work more sensuous than the works creating by standard animate´s processes.
          "When I invited William Kentridge to my studio, he viewed the basic equipment of animator as for example light through table, and suddenly he said: So it looks like this," the lead Czech animator Michaela Pavlátová remembers for artist first visit in Prague. For Kentridge is namely more important contents than a perfect technique. "It is not going about intention, but politic is always some steal into my films. It is said about political allegory, but I understand to my film as entry of time, some metaphor diary. In one sequence of Sobriety, obesity and growing old, dressed Soho Eckstein is laying in the bad in gas mask. It is a visual reaction to war in The Bay, which was in TV in live transmission," artist is saying.
          We can perceive Kentridge´s films on the background of changes in South African politic and society. The films are starting in desolate landscape with outputing tower, the death people from demonstrations are appearing on the stage, Soho Exkstein is buying a half of Johannesburg and melancholic Felix Teitlebaum is listening to the world and he dreams about Mrs. Eckstein. Water in the film presents the expectation and eroticism - Kentridge asserts, that this element appeared in the film by chance, because he bought in Paris so nice blue color. "The landscape around Johannesburg is dried up and water is utopia element," Kentridge provides at the end the key to the meaning. Painting water namely in his film runs over the basin and pours out from bath, it brings erotic dreams, in own revolt against thirsty swallows up characters and town, springs from windows of skyscrapers or it remains trust in the small reservoirs.

Marek Pokornŭ, MF Dnes, 23. 5. 1998