TRIUMPHS AND LAMENTS

2016, 70”, produced by In Between Art Film & Todos y Contentos y yo Tambien in association with Sky Arte, Rai Cinema, Lia Rumma and Tevereterno

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge was born in 1955 in Johannesburg, South Africa and he currently lives and works in Johannesburg. He studied at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He was a founding member of the Free Filmmakers Co-operative in 1988. Kentridge has participated in a number of international biennales and in Documenta X (1997) XI (2002) and XIII (2012) as well as the Venice Biennale (2005, 1999 and 1993). He has been the recipient of numerous prizes including the Kyoto Prize (2010), the Oskar Kokoschka Award, Vienna (2008), the Kaiserring Prize (2003), the Carnegie Prize, the Carnegie International (2000), Standard Bank Young Artist Award (1987), and the Red Ribbon Award for Short Fiction (1982). He has received honorary doctorates from institutions including the Royal College of Art, London (2010), Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa (2008), and the University of the Witwatersrand (2004). A retrospective of his work recently ended in 2012 after a three year international tour that began at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California (2009). William Kentridge’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the world including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellin, at the Museo de Arte del Banco de la Republica, Bogotá and at the Instituto Moreira Salles, Rio de Janeiro (2014), at the Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo (2013), at the MAXXI Museum, Rome, at the CAC, Malaga and at the Tate Modern, London (2012), the Louvre, Paris (2010), the Centres Pompidou, Paris (2002), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2002), and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (1998).

Triumphs and Laments (2016) documents one of William Kentridge’s most ambitious and talked about projects: a colossal frieze (550 metres long and 10 metres high) along the banks of the Tiber river in Rome portraying with an ephemeral and fragile technique the glories and tragedies of the Eternal City.

The film, shot with exclusive access to Kentridge over the course of two years from his home in South Africa to the center of Rome, details the artist’s vision and his creative process in developing a work of art that will disappear in just a few years.