Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot

Multiple-Oscar-winning U.S. film editor and sound designer Walter Murch supervised the editing.

Three episodes of the series were previewed at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the 2022 BFI London Film Festival.{{Cite web|url=https://artsfuse.org/262843/film-review-william-kentridges-wondrous-self-portrait-as-a-coffee-pot/|title=Film Review: William Kentridge’s Wondrous “Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot”|date=October 6, 2022|website=www.artsfuse.org}} The series had its world premiere as a video installation during the 2024 Venice Biennale at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.{{Cite web|url=https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/599237/william-kentridgeself-portrait-as-a-coffee-pot//|title=Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot”|date=April 8, 2024|website=www.e-flux.com}}

Its acquisition by MUBI in March 2024 gave the company exclusive global streaming rights through the purchase of the first of a limited number of editions sold by the artist’s galleries Hauser & Wirth and Goodman Gallery. This was described as an "unprecedented combination of fine art acquisition and streaming rights." {{Cite web|url=https://variety.com/2024/film/global/mubi-streaming-rights-south-african-artist-william-kentridge-series-self-portrait-as-a-coffee-pot-1235944425///|title=Mubi Takes Global Streaming Rights to South African Artist William Kentridge Series ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee Pot’ (EXCLUSIVE)”|date=March 18, 2024|website=www.variety.com}}.

The series, along with many of the works that appear in the series, were exhibited at Hauser & Wirth gallery in Chelsea, New York. {{Cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/09/t-magazine/william-kentridge.html///|title=William Kentridge Reflects on What It Means to Be a South African Artist”|date=June 9, 2025|website=www.nytimes.com}}

{{Episode table|background=#2832c2|overall=|title=|titleR={{cite news |title=MUBI Landing Page|url=https://mubi.com/en/fr/collections/self-portrait-as-coffee-pot}}|director=|directorR=|airdate=|airdateR=|episodes=

{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 1

|Title = A Natural History of the Studio

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = South African artist William Kentridge investigates life in the studio. He imagines his studio as an enlarged head, where multiple dialogues occur between the artist and himself. Kentridge begins interviewing his double. Soon, the whole studio is populated by Kentridge’s many selves.

|LineColor = #2832c2

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{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 2

|Title = Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = William Kentridge explores the making of a self-portrait as a way of coming to know oneself. He also welcomes the dancer Dada Masilo into his studio. As Kentridge attempts to draw his own figure with a brush attached to the tip of a long stick, his double watches the imperfect outcome from afar.

|LineColor = #2832c2

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{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 3

|Title = Vanishing Points

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = William Kentridge investigates how memory connects to place. Using two large blank sheets of paper, the artist draws a fictional colonial landscape, like those he remembers hanging in his childhood dining room. Meanwhile, his doppelgänger draws what he remembers actually seeing in Johannesburg.

|LineColor = #2832c2

}}

{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 4

|Title = Finding One's Fate

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = Remembering a story his father told him when he was a child, of Perseus killing his grandfather by accident, William Kentridge reflects on the inescapability of one’s destiny. He explores the story of the Cumaean Sibyl, who revealed people’s fate inscribed on leaves that fell from a tree.

|LineColor = #2832c2

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{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 5

|Title = AS IF

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = William Kentridge begins to paint black curved brushstrokes that align, but only from one point of view, into the shape of a horse. He debates with his doppelgänger, who sits on a tall wooden horse. The artist and a team of collaborators start to work on a large abstract sculpture.

|LineColor = #2832c2

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{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 6

|Title = Harvest of Devotion

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = William Kentridge recreates rehearsals for previous performance pieces. He reads a phonetic poem with performers Hamilton Dlamini, Mncedisi Shabangu, Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Mica Manganye. In contrast, they read John Chilembwe’s 1915 letter to the Nyasaland Times, arguing for equal standing in Malawi.

|LineColor = #2832c2

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{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 7

|Title = Metamorphosis

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = As William Kentridge explores metamorphosis, sounds are visualized through painting, a shadow turns into a sculpture, time morphs into a film strip, and an abstract blotch becomes an image. Meanwhile, the performers Joanna Dudley and Ann Masina act out a myth from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

|LineColor = #2832c2

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{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 8

|Title = Oh To Believe In Another World

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = Small paper puppets and actors wearing masks endlessly dance in a fictional Soviet museum as William Kentridge documents the making of his 2022 installation Oh to Believe in Another World, made in response to Symphony No. 10 by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich.

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{{Episode list

|EpisodeNumber = 9

|Title = In Defence of Optimism

|DirectedBy = William Kentridge

|OriginalAirDate = {{Start date|2024|10|18}}

|ShortSummary = William Kentridge explores the optimism of making things—how, even in dire circumstances, there will be people who play, create, and sing. He enlists a local brass band to lead a jolly procession out of the studio and into Johannesburg. But will Kentridge’s two split parts come to an agreement?

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{{reflist}}

• {{IMDb title|tt15129458}}
• [https://mubi.com/en/fr/collections/self-portrait-as-coffee-pot Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot] on MUBI

Category:2020 web series debuts

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