Film description

‘Felix in Exile’ was made just before South Africa’s first democratic elections. It asked questions about how we were going to remember those who had travelled the hard road, those who fought for a new social order, says director William Kentridge. The memories that move through his film seem already blurred, like the charcoal lines and ashen-blue hues filling each frame, endowing the work with a pensive, somber atmosphere. Felix is in a bare room. He writes on pieces of paper that a breeze carries beyond his windows, into a seemingly empty world. His true window onto memories of the past is an apparition in his mirror – a woman, in whose eyes Felix sees the vestiges of Apartheid. Perhaps she can make him see his world as it really is.

The screening of the film is a presage of next year William Kentridge’sretrospective.

Prepared by: Anna Bielak

Information about director

William Kentridge

Born in 1955 in South Africa. He received a degree in political science and African studies, which influence his work as an artist. Performance also plays a central role in his work – he founded a theater company, studied mime and theater in Paris and, from 1982 to 1984, was an art director for television series and feature films. Through his distinctive charcoal drawings, animated films and performances, he creates short lyrical narratives and commentary on the political oppression and industrial exploitation of South African people and landscapes.In 1989 he began making short animated films by photographing his charcoal drawings with a video camera and altering them in minute ways to move the story forward. The drawing and erasure of charcoal lines conjures an atmosphere of selective historical memory. Through a vast range of creative media, he constructs moral allegories out of lines and erasure to explore themes of love and betrayal, oppression and violence, death and regeneration.

Selected filmography

1989 Johannesburg: 2^nd Greatest City After Paris (short, anim.)

1991 Sobriety, Obesity & Growing Old (short, anim.)

1994 Felix in Exile (short, anim.)

1996 History of the Main Complaint (short, anim.)

1998 Weighing and Wanting (short, anim.)

2003 Tide Table (short, anim.)

Prepared by: Anna Bielak

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