Three decades of William Kentridge's animations are being screened online in a five-day-long mini film festival (29 September-3 October), organised by Goodman Gallery ahead of the artist's new Johannesburg exhibition City Deep (6 October-12 November). Each selection of videos is available for only 24 hours through the gallery's website.
The Art Newspaper has partnered with Goodman Gallery to exclusively premiere Kentridge's newest film City Deep (2020) today. The 11th film in the artist's Drawings for Projection series, it continues to follow the main character Soho Eckstein, a middle-aged businessman in Johannesburg. In the animation he surveys post-industrial South Africa, with depictions of a crumbling Johannesburg Art Gallery juxtaposed with scenes showing the phenomenon of the Zama Zamas—illegal "artisanal" miners in South Africa who search old mines for remnants of gold. "What the film means—what the relationship is between Soho looking at this hole in the ground which has this Zama Zama in it and the collapse of the art gallery—that's not known in advance. And if I were to talk about it it would be my interpretation rather than what comes through," Kentridge says.
You can also watch the artist discuss his film below.