Piccolo Festival dell' Animazione 2020 Opens with William Kentridge

William Kentridge, winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2017, signs his last animation since “Notes Towards a Model Opera”, 2015. The film "Waiting for the Sibyl", 2020, 10', can be enjoyed on December 27th at 21:00 on the special PFA vimeo channel. 

Paola Bristot, artistic director of PFA, and one of the few people who had the privilege to watch the film so far, wrote about the film:

William Kentridge's film was born following a theatrical representation he made for Teatro dell'Opera di Roma in 2019. It is a prophetic reflection about a suspended situation with many unanswered questions, similar to the ones that grip on us in the present. The Sibyl wrote her prophecies on the oak leaves that she gathered in her cave while waiting for the beggars. The random system upon which those leaves are chosen is comparable to today's algorithm. We are at the mercy of coincidences and science is showing its limitations over events that overwhelm all of us and also affect the world's population in an immeasurable way.

Pages scroll and the blindness and cancellation of words, as well as dance and geometry, some sentences anchor us to the ground and make us ponder on what could be the way for a possible future path. The Sibyl's words settle lightly as leaves, and we grasp them trying to memorize them, hoping to remember their words in order to mark the steps on a road that will lead us away from here. Among the many images that follow one another along a rhythmic and atavistic music, the faces of Michelangelo's Sibyls painted on the Sistine Chapel will appear. Timeless images that while scrolling through the book of answers, will rise over us from above.

Old Gods have retired
I no longer believe what I once believed

Speak of William Kentridge and his work is to speak of one of the most serious and important references in contemporary art. In particular, speaking of his animated work, William has always had a defined social and political commitment. His technique was as innovative as it was questioned at the time, but in both cases admired. The feat to screen the film on streaming is huge since it is an important film that deserves to be screened on the big screen. The scoop is thanks to William Kentdrige's kindness and the hard work of PFA to bring the best out of the animation made by acclaimed authors. 

Don't miss the screening on the PFA Vimeo channel  on December 27th at 21:00.

About William Kentridge:
William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 28 April 1955), holds a degree in Political Science and African Studies from the University of the Witwatersrand as well as a degree in Fine Arts from the Johannesburg Art Foundation. In the early 1980s he studied Mime-work and Theater at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He has created numerous animated films, drawings, installations and sculptures. In Italy, in Rome, in addition to the recent show for the Opera House, "Waiting For The Sibyl" (2019), he created a series of murals along the Tiber embankment "Triumphs and Laments", (2016), which depicts a procession of more than 80 figures that flows in over 500 meters. Again in Italy he designed the large mosaic of the Toledo Station in the Naples subway (2018). His works are exhibited in the most important international museums and art galleries. The topics he addresses in his works are connected to social and political issues, such as the apartheid, colonialism, totalitarianism and so on. All of his works are of great expressive and poetic power, full of dreamlike and visionary inspirations that place him among the greatest artists of Contemporary Art. As for his animated cinema activity, he started producing stop-motion films in 1989 to this day, including "Monument" (1990), "Felix in Exile" (1994), "" Stereoscope "( 1999), “Tide Table (2003)“ Other Faces ”(2011)“ Notes toward a Model Opera (2015). In 1988 he was co-founder of Free Film-makers Co-Operative.

• Find all highlights of the 13th Piccolo Festival dell' Animazione Festival
• Piccolo Festival dell'Animazione webpage