AllMovie

As originally produced for, and broadcast on, PBS's acclaimed Art21 series, this documentary etches out a complex biographical portrait of South African multimedia artist William Kentridge. The film discusses how Kentridge succeeded at using a variety of forms, including opera, animation, tapestry and theater, to explore multifarious subjects - everything from societal cataclysms to intimate experiences from his own inner life. In telling Kentridge's life story, director Charles Atlas draws on such resources as interviews with the artist, glimpses of his creative process in such locales as his Johannesburg art studio, and a firsthand look at his staging and direction of Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose onstage.