William Kentridge’s Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot Now Streaming Worldwide on MUBI.- From today (October 18th) you can watch William Kentridge’s extraordinary, expansive SelfPortrait As A Coffee-Pot on MUBI available to watch worldwide, following special previews at Toronto International Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival and its presentation at the Arsenale Institute for the Politics of Representation, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, during the Venice Biennale of Art 2024.
Laying bare the creative process, Self-Portrait As A Coffee-Pot is a dazzling, nine-episode film series by South African artist William Kentridge, renowned for his animated drawings for projection, as well as his sculpture, theatre and opera productions over the last forty years.
Shot in his Johannesburg studio during and in the aftermath of the 2020–2022 COVID-19 pandemic and inspired in part by Charlie Chaplin, Dziga Vertov and the innovative wit of early cinema, this lively series of distinct but interconnected vignettes, at turns humorous, philosophical, political and probing, is a hymn to artistic freedom and the power of imagination, even when confronted with the challenge of isolation in enclosed spaces.
Bringing together hand-drawn animations, collage, performance and music, as well as dialogues with collaborators and doppelgängers, the series invites us to step inside the intimacy of the studio, where shared discoveries about culture, history and politics, and profound truths about the ways we live and think today are uncovered through the making of works of art.
Self-Portrait As A Coffee-Pot is a series made to offer viewers a sense and spirit of possibility, from an artist’s perspective. It is intended as a polemic experience about a way of working, a confidence in giving an image the benefit of the doubt, and seeing what emerges… At its heart this is really a series about the optimism and agency of making, itself. There’s an inherent optimism in the activity of taking the blank piece of paper at the beginning and having something at the end. If there’s a central argument I have to offer and engage audiences, it would be the defense of an optimism of making.
William Kentridge
The nine-episode series, created and directed by William Kentridge, is executive produced by Rachel Chanoff and Noah Bashevkin of THE OFFICE PERFORMING ARTS FILM, Joslyn Barnes of LOUVERTURE FILMS and the WILLIAM KENTRIDGE STUDIO, and edited by Walter Murch, Janus Fouché and Žana Marovi?.
EPISODE LIST (ALL AVAILABLE ON MUBI FROM 18th OCTOBER):
Episode 1: A Natural History of the Studio (22 min 03 sec)
Episode 2: Self Portrait as a Coffee-Pot (33 min 15 sec)
Episode 3: Vanishing Points (34 min 19 sec)
Episode 4: Finding One’s Fate (31 min 02 sec)
Episode 5: AS IF (27 min 29 sec)
Episode 6: A Harvest of Devotion (31 min 24 sec)
Episode 7: Metamorphosis (25 min 31 sec)
Episode 8: Oh To Believe in Another World (31 min 23 sec)
Episode 9: In Defence of Optimism (26 min 53 sec)
Hauser & Wirth events in Support
Marking the launch of the release in October 2024, the films will screen for three days in an immersive intervention at Hauser & Wirth 18th Street in New York. Additionally, a series of conversations, hosted by William Kentridge with special guests, will also take place each of the three nights, from 22-24 October.
22nd October: With Joslyn Barnes (Louverture Films) & Robyn Farrell (The Kitchen)
23rd October: With Novelist Lynn Tillman
24th October: With Artist Martine Syms & Writer Vincent Cunningham
Hauser & Wirth New York, 443 W 18th Street, NY, 10011 Installation open daily 22nd-24th October from 10AM – 6PM TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
About the artist
William Kentridge (born Johannesburg, South Africa, 1955) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions. Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums around the world since his first survey exhibition in 1998 at Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, including the Albertina Museum (Vienna), Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Turin), Johannesburg Art Gallery, Kunstmuseum Basel, Louisiana Museum (Humlebaek), Musée du Louvre (Paris), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Norval Foundation (Cape Town), Royal Academy of Arts (London), Whitechapel Gallery (London) and Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Cape Town). He has participated a number of times in documenta (Kassel) (2012, 2002, 1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999), as well as the Sydney Biennale (2008) and the Istanbul Biennale (1995, 2015).
Kentridge’s opera productions began in 2005 with Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which embarked on an international tour of opera houses after opening at La Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium. Subsequent productions include Shostakovich’s The Nose and Alban Berg’s operas Lulu and Wozzeck, and have
been staged in opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera House (New York), La Scala (Milan),
English National Opera (London), Opera de Lyon, Amsterdam Opera, the Sydney Opera House, as well
as the KUNSTENFESTIVALDESARTS (Brussels) and the Salzburger Festspiele. Kentridge’s film, Oh To
Believe in Another World, made to accompany the performance of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony, premiered at KKL Luzern in 2022 and has since been performed in venues worldwide.
Kentridge’s theatrical productions, performed in theatres and at festivals across the globe, include The Great Yes, the Great No (2024), Sibyl (2019), The Head & the Load (2018), Ursonate (2017), Winterreise (2014), Paper Music (2014), Refuse the Hour (2011) and, in collaboration with the Handspring Puppet Company, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (1998), Ubu & the Truth Commission (1997), Faustus in Africa! (1995) and Woyzeck on the Highveld(1992). In 2016, Kentridge founded the Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg: a space for responsive thinking and making through experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts practices. The centre hosts an ongoing programme of workshops, public performances and mentorship activities.
Kentridge is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale, University
of London and Columbia University. In 2012, he presented the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at
Harvard University. As the Slade Professor of Fine Art for 2023/24, Kentridge delivered a series of six
lectures at the University of Oxford in January and February, 2024.
