William Kentridge explores the optimism of making things—how, even in dire circumstances, there will be people who play, create, and sing. He enlists a local brass band to lead a jolly procession out of the studio and into Johannesburg. But will Kentridge’s two split parts come to an agreement?
As William Kentridge explores metamorphosis, sounds are visualized through painting, a shadow turns into a sculpture, time morphs into a film strip, and an abstract blotch becomes an image. Meanwhile, the performers Joanna Dudley and Ann Masina act out a myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Remembering a story his father told him when he was a child, of Perseus killing his grandfather by accident, William Kentridge reflects on the inescapability of one’s destiny. He explores the story of the Cumana Sibyl, who revealed people’s fate inscribed on leaves that fell from a tree.
William Kentridge recreates rehearsals for previous performance pieces. He reads a phonetic poem with performers Hamilton Dlamini, Mncedisi Shabangu, Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Mica Manganye. In contrast, they read John Chilembwe’s 1915 letter to the Nyasaland Times, arguing for equal standing in Malawi.
5
Audiovisual material gathered by filmmaker Fox Maxy over a decade, including documentary footage, television clips, and animation—sometimes layered on top of one another—are presented as one collage. Amid this sensory barrage, themes of sexual violence, community, confidence and joy are explored.
In December 1969, legendary pianist and composer Thelonious Monk ended his European tour in Paris. Before the show, Monk appeared on French TV to perform and speak with French jazz pianist Henri Renaud. Newly discovered footage reveals the disconnect between Monk and his interviewer.
William Kentridge explores the making of a self-portrait as a way of coming to know oneself. He also welcomes the dancer Dada Masilo into his studio. As Kentridge attempts to draw his own figure with a brush attached to the tip of a long stick, his double watches the imperfect outcome from afar.
William Kentridge investigates how memory connects to place. Using two large blank sheets of paper, the artist draws a fictional colonial landscape, like those he remembers hanging in his childhood dining room. Meanwhile, his doppelgänger draws what he remembers actually seeing in Johannesburg.
Small paper puppets and actors wearing masks endlessly dance in a fictional Soviet museum as William Kentridge documents the making of his 2022 installation Oh to Believe in Another World, made in response to Symphony No. 10 by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Shakedown was a series of parties founded by and for Black women in Los Angeles featuring go-go dancing and strip shows for the city’s lesbian underground scene. In them, female clientele slipped dollar notes into lap dancers’ panties while celebrating lesbian sexuality to pulsating hip-hop beats.
7.9
Martin Scorsese presents this very personal and insightful new feature-length documentary about British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
7.4
Elizabeth Sankey’s deeply personal documentary examines the relationship between the cinematic portrayals of witches and the all-too-real experiences of postpartum depression by utilizing footage that spans the entirety of film history alongside heartrending personal testimony.
6.8
Thousands of royal artifacts of Dahomey, a West African kingdom, were taken by French colonists in the 19th century for collection and display in Paris. Centuries later, a fraction returned to their home in modern-day Benin. This dramatized documentary follows the journey of 26 of the treasures as told by cultural art historians, embattled university students, and one of the repatriated statues himself.
6.9
Two unemployed friends have a fresh idea: they want to stage Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' in Grand Theft Auto. But even in a virtual world, reality intrudes in a wild and trippy film shot entirely inside the ultra-violent video game.
7.1
Fashion designer John Galliano was widely recognized as one of the most successful names in 1990s and 2000s couture, until his career abruptly ended when he was caught on camera in 2011 hurling antisemitic and racist insults at bystanders in Paris.
South African artist William Kentridge investigates life in the studio. He imagines his studio as an enlarged head, where multiple dialogues occur between the artist and himself. Kentridge begins interviewing his double. Soon, the whole studio is populated by Kentridge’s many selves.
6.7
Bass-heavy and neon-coloured portrait of the alternative Chinese youth in a country in constant state of change that now threatens the underground club Funky Town.
7.5
After documenting her pregnancy, director Eliza Capai talks with other women who have had similar experiences, creating a powerful and touching choir of voices that reverberates on universal themes: life, death, mourning and public policies that affect us all.
6.6
The past collides with the present in this excavation of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam: a journey from World War II to recent years of pandemic and protest and a provocative, life-affirming reflection on memory, time and what's to come.
6.4
If history is written by the victors, where does that leave those who were never allowed to be part of the game? A collective of queer athletes enters the Olympic Stadium in Athens and sets out to honour those who were excluded from standing on the winners’ podium. They meet Amanda Reiter, a trans* marathon runner who has to struggle with the prejudices of sports organisers, and Annet Negesa, an 800m runner who was urged by the international sports federations to undergo hormone-altering surgery. Together they create a radical poetic utopia far from the rigid gender rules found in competitive sports.
