William Kentridge blends animation and ballet to confront Soviet tyranny

William Kentridge’s hour-long film *Oh to Believe in Another World* combines animation, puppetry and live dance with a live orchestral performance of Shostakovich’s 10th Symphony. Presented at the Baku international arts festival, it uses the music’s uneasy mix of fear, revulsion and grief to examine Soviet history, political idealism and the human cost of tyranny.

Masks and miniature sets bring figures including Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Mayakovsky and Shostakovich into a deliberately uncanny world, where dancers and models move between comic absurdity and tragedy. The film’s four movements include images of people targeted by the state, Nazirova dancing and Stalin shooting, before Kentridge’s hand enters the frame as the masks come off. The festival performance also marks the 120th anniversary of Shostakovich’s birth and recalls his reported unrequited love for Azerbaijani pianist and composer Elmira Nazirova.