South African artist William Kentridge has forged a unique practice, one that is rooted in avant-garde theater and traditional forms of Left cultural critique even as it responds to contemporary video and the international art world. Translating his distinctive charcoal drawings into hand-made animated films that show signs of erasure and reworking, Kentridge crafts allegorical, gestural narratives that may be read as specific to the political and social realities of South Africa, at the same time that they function as powerful observations of the human condition.