After his revolutionary staging of Dmitri Shostakovich’s first opera, The Nose, William Kentridge returns to the composer with a 50-minute film designed as a dynamic visual counterpoint to his monumental Symphony No. 10. Commissioned by the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, Oh To Believe In Another World premiered at the KKL Luzern in 2022 with live musical accompaniment by the orchestra. Using collage, puppets and masked actors, Kentridge creates a dream-like ‘Soviet museum’ to accompany the symphony, featuring a cast of characters including Lenin, Stalin, and Shostakovich himself.
A film for Shostakovich 10th Symphony
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Symphony No. 10 was premiered by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra on December 17, 1953, a few months after the death of Stalin. In it he puts into music the violence and dread of Russia’s years under the dictator’s regime. Oh To Believe in Another World expands on decades of critical engagement with life and culture under the Soviet Union. Of Shostakovich’s pieces, his 10th Symphony – composed in anticipation of Stalin’s death – has always been most pertinent for Kentridge because of its humanity: “we can still feel the emotional journey of the symphony, independent of its historical moorings.”
It was Shostakovich's first symphonic work since his second denunciation in 1948, and is often cited as an inflection point in his rehabilitation as a creative artist. Kentridge’s film incorporates elements of techniques he developed and deployed in his production of Wozzeck, his expansive multidisciplinary theatrical work The Head & the Load, and the immersive Pepper’s Ghost illusion used in his experimental adaptation of the avant garde theater piece Mayakovsky: A Tragedy. The project exists in another form as an immersive, five-channel video installation. The film illuminates, interrogates, and honors the symphony; the combination adds up to an inspiringly confounding evening of music and cinema.
Commissioned by the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and made possible through a grant by the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.
2022
Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, Lucerne (CH) | Pompeii Theatrum Mundi, Pompeii (IT)
2023
Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Hong Kong (HK) | Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna (AT)
2024
Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona (ES)| New York Philharmonic, New York (USA)
2025
Bergen International Festival, Bergen (NO) | GS Arts Center, Seoul (KR) | MITO SettembreMusica, Milan (IT) | Philharmonie de Paris, Paris (FR) | Philharmonie Essen, Essen (DE) | Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane (AU) | Southbank Center, London (UK)
2026
Bozar, Brussels (BE)| Baku International Arts Festival (AZ)
A Film to Accompany the Performance of Shostakovich Symphony No. 10 in E Minor
Director: William Kentridge
Editors: Janus Fouché, Žana Marović
Costume & Puppet Designer: Greta Goiris
Set & Model Designer: Sabine Theunissen
Cinematographer: Duško Marović SASC
Video Control: Kim Gunning
Assistant Director of Chorus: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Performers: Thulani Chauke, Luc De Wit, Andrea Fabi, Teresa Phuti Mojela, and Phuphuma Love Minus (Isicathamiya Chorus)
Costume and Puppet Makers: Emmanuelle Erhart, Judith Stokart (assisted by Diego Sillands)
Model Makers: Damon Garstang, Claire Zinn
Associate Editor: Joshua Trappler
Assistant Compositor: Octavia Sonyane
Camera Operators and Technical Direction: Chris-Waldo de Wet, Jacques van Staden
Production Management: Taryn Buccellato
Studio Director: Anne McIlleron
Administration: Linda Leibowitz, Natalie Dembo
Project Initiator: Numa Bischof Ullmann
Executive Producer: THE OFFICE performing arts + film
Five Channel Film Installation 15 min 42 sec
Director: William Kentridge
Editor & Sound Designer: Janus Fouché
Additional Editors: Žana Marović, Joshua Trappler
Costume & Puppet Designer: Greta Goiris
Set & Model Designer: Sabine Theunissen
Cinematographer: Duško Marović SASC
Performers: Thulani Chauke, Luc De Wit, Andrea Fabi, Teresa Phuti Mojela, and Phuphuma Love Minus (Isicathamiya Chorus)
Assistant Director of Chorus: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Costume and Puppet Makers: Emmanuelle Erhart, Judith Stokart (assisted by Diego Sillands)
Model Makers: Damon Garstang, Claire Zinn
Compositor: Janus Fouché
Assistant Compositor: Octavia Sonyane
Camera Operators and Technical Direction: Chris-Waldo de Wet, Jacques van Staden
Production Management: Taryn Buccellato
Studio Director: Anne McIlleron
Administration: Linda Leibowitz, Natalie Dembo
Press
The Guardian: Review: Oh to Believe in Another World review – Gripping Kentridge and Shostakovich bring Stalin’s age of betrayal to life
Financial Times: William Kentridge meets Shostakovich in a work of powerful ambiguity
The New York Times: Review: William Kentridge’s Collaged Fever Dream of Shostakovich
The Brooklyn Rail: William Kentridge: Oh To Believe in Another World
South China Morning Post: Review: Artistic inspiration versus propaganda: William Kentridge’s film to accompany Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony channels composer’s struggle with Stalinism
