4 Soho Eckstein Films [Johannesburg - Second Greatest City after Paris, 1989; Monument, 1990; Mine, 1991; Sobriety, Obesity and Growing Old, 1991]

About this Brooklyn Icon

The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.

These films are from a series of 10 animated shorts made by South African multidisciplinary artist William Kentridge in the 1980s and ’90s. The films center on Soho Eckstein, a middle-aged businessman and property developer; Mrs. Eckstein, Soho’s lonely wife; and artist Felix Teitelbaum, Soho’s alter ego and Mrs. Eckstein’s lover. Through these complex fictional characters, Kentridge examines the political landscape and emotional layers of national trauma, from anger and despair to forgiveness and hope.

In a process that Kentridge aptly terms “Stone Age filmmaking,” he used a blank sheet of paper, horsehair brush, charcoal dust, stick of charcoal, and eraser to draft and smudge each drawing by hand. The acts of drawing, erasing, and meticulously recording the changes with stop-motion camerawork serve as metaphors for the precarious nature of time, memory, and histories experienced and imagined.