The Handmade Films of William Kentridge - Part 2 imagine...

MUSIC: Nansi Imali by Ladysmith Black Mambazo

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

William Kentridge is an artist of global stature,

whose work is shown in museums and opera houses around the world.

He was born in South Africa shortly after the imposition of apartheid,

and his career has coincided

with the most turbulent period in his country's history.

The impulse behind Felix In Exile

came from a whole lot of police photographs

of bodies in the landscape,

bodies in the veld.

And the specific individual figures that are drawn

are based very much on these police photographs

of people who'd been killed -

some of them in ordinary criminal violence,

but a lot in political violence.

This was a very difficult time, wasn't it?

I mean, this is 1994.

This is the period just before our first democratic election.

Which, at the time, was very much in doubt.

That lead up to the election was mired in blood and deaths.

And one of the questions I had was, after this is over,

when we've got our transformed society,

in what way is this remembered? Do these people still have a place?

In what way will they disappear

in the way the bodies disappear into the landscape?

WOMAN SINGS

GENTLE CLASSICAL MUSIC THROUGHOUT

WOMAN SINGS

RUNNING WATER

RUMBLING

CLACKING

SCRATCHING

WOMAN SINGS

SQUEAKING

RASPY SCRATCHES

WOMAN SINGS

CHATTERING

CLACKING

SCRATCHING

TINKLING

WOMAN SINGS

TINKLING

SCRATCHING

RUMBLING

WOMAN SINGS CLACKING

HOWLING

WOMAN SINGS

BIRDSONG

WOMAN SINGS

CRICKETS CHIRP

WIND BLOWS