18th Nov 2007
Sallis Benney Theatre
In developing his technique for production of animated film, William Kentridge has achieved a major innovation. Working in charcoal, he first draws the image and then exposes two frames of a 35 mm film to capture the image. He then erases part of the drawing and re-draws before filming again. The process is painstaking and laborious. It is also a process in which the lapse of time both destroys each drawing in the process of making the film, yet, as each frame progresses, the traces of the past are preserved in the imperfect erasure of the previous moment. In this way history is stamped on the present even as it is transcending. The result is a startingly effective animating technique.
The subject matter of his films focuses on the life and personal tragedies of three anti-heroes: Soho Eckstein, a powerful property developer and mining magnate, Eckstein’s wife, and her lover Felix Teitelbaum. The tracing of these lives is also a tracing of the trajectory of South Africa’s polity deeper into the mire of Apartheid and the destruction of the lives and hopes of millions.
To these nine films, Philip Miller has provided a score, one that has transformed and enhanced the nature of experiencing them. The music certainly echoes the drawings in terms of the emotional texture, the nostalgia and melancholia, and the sense of loss and longing. But it also does more. According to Kentridge himself, the music provides the films with “a narrative thrust (…) and (…) a grammar” that they otherwise did not possess to the same extent. “With the music for these films, Philip the changes the way we see.” (William Kentridge, 1999).
In Brighton, on November 18th all nine of Kentridge’s films will be shown in the Sallis Benney Theatre, accompanied by a live performance of Miller’s score, conducted by the composer himself. Selected pairs of the 9 Eckstein Films will be shown at the University Gallery in Grand Parade during the period of the exhibition (check this website again for details) .
The music will be provided by the Archimia Quartett and by Vincenco Pasquariello, piano, and Tumelo Meloi, vocalist, and organized by Change Performing Arts, Milan, Italy.
Miller, who was born in London and grew up in Cape Town, has worked closely with Kentridge, supplying musical compositions for Kentridge’s animated films. Now recognized as a composer of international standing with a triumphal performance of his most recent cantata for mass choir in New York, he has written music for television drama, feature films and documentaries. In Brighton he will be conducting the Archimia Quartett (Milan) in the performance of his works composed for Kentridge’s Soho Eckstein film series.
See also: Exhibition | Symposium | Performance
