I recently visited the Tate Modern, and stumbled across a short animated film, produced by William Kentridge in 1997, with the purpose of reflecting on the brutal Apartheid past of South Africa.
The film itself was presumably made using cut-out and drawn animation, all using white lines on a black screen. The content was obscure, disorientating, sexualised, and violent. There was not a ‘story’ per se, but an arch of abject humanoid characters illustrating the discomforts of living under a violent, pervasive and intrusive regime. To exaggerate this, the use of anthropomorphised cameras and weapons were persistent themes.
The film was unsettling both in terms of a disjointed soundtrack, and a child-like illustrative style, that had sexualised and violent themes, as the images below demonstrate.
The film was made in South Africa amid the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ hearings in 1997. The style of animation, according to Kentridge, is intended to place the camera as participating in the crimes committed in the film, which occasionally directly reflect real footage of police officers’ behaviour in South Africa in the 1980’s and 1990’s.