William Kentridge: Drawings for Projection

William Kentridge: Drawings for Projection presented two animated films by the South African artist and filmmaker, William Kentridge. In Felix in Exile: Geography of Memory, the fifth in a series of animated films, Kentridge used a single charcoal drawing for each shot of the sequence. These drawings were then altered iteratively frame by frame, either by addition of further drawing, or through the erasure of parts of the image. Kentridge notes that there were a number of starting points for Felix in Exile: Geography of Memory, including experimenting and playing with words and forming anagrams on a computer. Reflecting on this process, Kentridge says, "I have a contradictory response to these word games—on the one hand, I am wary of the particularly Anglo-Saxon tendency to rely on puns and alliterations as a substitute for ideas. One cannot really justify launching a film on the basis of an anagram but, on the other hand, I do rely on and trust in things that at the same time seem whimsical, incidental, unauthentic."

In History of the Main Complaint, Kentridge chronicled the history of Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. The film was made in 1996 at the time of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa, with Kentridge saying that, "The film was not made as an illustration of the processes of the commission, but the questions of guilt or responsibility (and the fine and shifting line between them) were in the air and certainly found their way into the film." Inspired by technologies that scan the body, such as MRI, x-rays, CAT scans, and sonar, History of the Main Complaint used this as a metaphorical lens through which to consider ideas of conscience and thought processes. Intrigued by many elements, namely memory, terrain, and history, Kentridge analyzed the relationship between remembrance and erasure, especially as it relates to South African history.