our stories this the official death toll of covid-19 in our stories this the official death toll of covid—19 in italy is our stories this the official death toll of covid—i9 in italy is worst affected region of lombardi has jumped by more than a hundred and just one day. there are concerns that if the infection continues to spread out its current rate, northern italy will soon run out of intensive care beds. four suspects are to go on trial on monday in the hague over the downing of the malaise and plain mhi7. three russians and one ukrainian are accused of playing crucial roles in the shooting down of the aircraft in 2014. and videos to mark international women's day are getting a lot of views on our website. much as to raise awareness about discrimination towards women have taken place around the world. the eighth of march has been marked asa the eighth of march has been marked as a special day for women for more than a century. thanks for watching.

just after half past midnight, it is time for hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk from south africa where my guest has been described as one of the world ‘s greatest living artists. he is william kentridge and this is a major exhibition of his work in cape town. william kentridge is versatile, ha rd—hitting and town. william kentridge is versatile, hard—hitting and his talents spanning many different genres. but how has south africa's violent and racist past influenced his work as a white artist? welcome to hardtalk. thank you very

much and welcome to the studio in johannesburg. you were born in johannesburg. you were born in johannesburg in 1955, the son of two prominent anti—apartheid lawyers. how did growing up under apartheid affects you 7 how did growing up under apartheid affects you? i think because my pa rents were affects you? i think because my parents were both very much aware of and involved in legal questions around the anti—apartheid struggle, from a young age i was aware of how unnatural south africa was. this was a slight disjunction between myself and say, other people in the class whose parents took it as a natural... remember all whose parents took it as a natural... rememberallwhite school, all white children, assumed that apartheid was part of the natural order. from a very young age, in terms of things that were set at the dinner table, into the people came to the house, i was aware of the unnaturalness of south african society. your parents were very anti— apartheid that they weren't members of the anc but they did represent people like nelson

mandela, desmond tutu, one would have expected you to perhaps have followed in their footsteps because you did after all study african studies and politics. you did after all study african studies and politicslj you did after all study african studies and politics. i think there isa studies and politics. i think there is a strange relationship between my pa rents is a strange relationship between my parents being lawyers and me being an artist. that was a sense of needing to find a way of finding my own opinion that would be impervious toa own opinion that would be impervious to a parent cross—examination. we needed to be a way of making sense of the world that was not the same as the linear, logic of the law. i think it is partly as a... every child having to find a defence against the power of their parents and for me, it was for becoming an artist. only this years and years and months of therapy later to understand the connection but i'm sure it's there. what is the connection and because obviously went to become an artist and politics became a very central theme

of your work, that he married the two influences? i think it is and the larger question about my parents is what is the nature of the society and what is the nature ofjustice. there, they are questions that interest me enormously. i suppose as a young child, you have two, not as a young child, you have two, not as a young child but others an adolescent, you have to find a route to find your own voice and if it was going to be in the terms of law and legal thinking, i was on a fast track to nothing. i was never going to bea track to nothing. i was never going to be a smart or a sharper is either of my parents in that field. have you kept that with you because it is rather odd, here this internationally renowned artist but you said you end up as an artist, it was what i was reduced to. you can noise to a biography in which you describe how you are rescued by your failures. for example, try to be an oil painter, placing oil on canvas which is the way an artist was meant to be when i was growing up and i

failed at that, was really bad about. then i thought for a while i would become an actor and i went to vienna school and i failed would become an actor and i went to vienna school and ifailed as an actor. i had been, if i'd failed less badly, i may have been a mediocre act of the rest of my life and wonder why never got decent roles and i failed at that. and i try to be a filmmaker and i found i could manage that what was left was to go back to be an artist. enron, the filmmaking and theatre and the political studies university, all of those feet and fed into the work thatis those feet and fed into the work that is done now. after you left university, he then studied art at a private art school and as you've just outlined, you really were very active across a whole number of mediums. yourfriend active across a whole number of mediums. your friend said active across a whole number of mediums. yourfriend said to active across a whole number of mediums. your friend said to you, look, william, day one thing and do it well but you didn't take that advice did you? i tried to take it so advice did you? i tried to take it so well. try to be a bit of a jack of all trades. i tried it very well, thinking that was the conventional wisdom. do thing and do it well. if you're doing drawing, adjuster

drawings. i gave up drawing. the certificate, only theatre. i came back from the studies and i was working in the studio, i found that in spite of myself, i was still interested in theatre and the drawings becoming films and only later did i understand that this ci’oss later did i understand that this cross pollination, this busted form of partly drawing, partly theatre, mixing with music was by far the richest way of any of those forms. the drawings were better from being connected to vienna, the theatre was better from being connected to vienna, the theatre was betterfrom being connected to filmmaking. and you studied after you left south africa, you went to study mime and theatre in paris after you've finished your studies here in south africa. you came back and then you fairly quickly established a name for your drawings and prints. she really hit the international stage when in 1989, he devised this very original way of drawing with charcoal on paper and then a it and redrawing it and

filming and making into animated films. if you are drawing and you feel mad at it as being done frame by frame, the drawing comes into being but you can keep on the process of arresting and drawing and the drawing has a kind of movement. there were interesting combinations of this. one i think, temperamentally for me, it was interesting to find a way within art making to be able to show the world as process rather than facts. you can say, here's a table, drawing of a table, there is a table, there is a table, there is a table, there is a fact. but you can also say a table is one stage between going backwards, the planks, the sawmill, the tree, and going forward, the broken table, the fire, and ashes. with animation, you acknowledge that that table is one moments in a process of becoming. in terms of the world seeing the work, there was a fortu nate world seeing the work, there was a fortunate timing. as i started doing animated films in 1989, 1990, that was a period when mandela was

released from prison, the anc was not banned anymore and suddenly people from all over the world, journalists, directors, museum people, came to see south africa which had been such a pariah nation for so many years. that was fortu nate for so many years. that was fortunate timing as well. the zeitgeist was with you. so that's very much the unique technique that you developed but just very much the unique technique that you developed butjust looking at the contents which kind of infuses all of your work. you are very influenced by the dadaist movement which started during the first world war as which started during the first world warasa which started during the first world war as a reaction to the horrors going on. the kind of has a satirical approach doesn't it? going on. the kind of has a satirical approach doesn't mm has a satirical approach but what dada had and the area i'm still interested in working with is more i would say the absurd. the absurd, not as the way it is understood in england as the fullest, dry, humourous, but the absurd as saying

you take a logic and if there is a crack in that logic and you follow it through to the nth degree, get an absurdity in the world. instead of africa, the ways of understanding apartheid was as this absurd logic where people's futures and wires we re where people's futures and wires were designated by how clearly they have was, how dark their skin was, and absurdity deep in the heart of that logic but it is carried through toa that logic but it is carried through to a murderous end. there is a way in which taking the absurd and the logic and twisting it is a way of naturalism also, an accurate way of describing parts of the world that are out of kilter. in 1989, you began a series of short films based ona began a series of short films based on a property developer called soho ex— dean who is a wealthy real estate developer and he becomes a civic benefactor, a wrecked statue to the black south african worker

from which his wealth is derived and then in the film, the statue moves. what we're trying to get with that filmi think that it is very different in what i was trying to convey. i think if they knew what i try be exactly common interest of the work disappears. the interest in the work disappears. the interest in the impulse and following the impulse and see what i'm what i'm interested in after the process rather than at the beginning of the process. as i say, it is thinking material, trapping trust in the material, trapping trust in the material to reveal things to you that you already know, that you're not aware of. it's a way of bringing different elements of a fragmented world together. and so the films we re world together. and so the films were made without scripts or storyboards and that is important that they start within impulse or an image under the drawings and films expand backwards and forwards and then you discover what the question is. the most recent ones about the

extraordinary phenomena of the illegal miners that are working in many parts and old abandoned coal mines around johannesburg in this area. trying to get bits of gold that they can sell. trying to get gold. no—one had the others enormous mechanical grubs they can grab 20 times 11 rock at the same time and a hundred metres away, we have someone sitting in a small, shallow hole with a hammer and a screwdriver literally chipping away at a rock, grinding the rock with a piece of concrete and animal bowl and panning it mixing with mercury and an old sock to get a tiny dot of gold which they will sell to a gold dealer which eventually goes into the commercial gold market. what is the message in the film that you gone from the massive gold production of an industrial level to this artisanal. .. it's an industrial level to this artisanal... it's a phenomenon and thatis

artisanal... it's a phenomenon and that is the way in which things are seen that is the way in which things are seenin that is the way in which things are seen in south africa which i think will be a pattern in other parts of the world also. and that is when a huge industrial edifice, the gold mining industry in south africa, sta rts mining industry in south africa, starts to collapse and the gold mining, the people employed by the gold mines go from many many hundreds of thousands to less than 100,000. there are many tens of thousands of people who are out of work, looking for a way of making a living and have no place in a formal economy, will not be employed in a formal economy and have two make the informal economy work. the formal economy ends up being subsidised by the informal economy in recycling of plastics and garbage, in the strange activity of this artisan and at the moment, legal mining. because it is illegal, there is enormous banality of gangs controlling. people have to look them themselves to feed themselves because the system is failing themselves. it's my

extraordinary, you have trade unions in the mines for more than 30 years working to improve safety regulations and controls and leave and then the unofficial people come in and you underground for six weeks ata time in and you underground for six weeks at a time and have to pay protection money for food to come down. it is an extraordinary disjunction. that feels in a key transformations happening in south africa at the moment. the art magazine frees said way back in 1988 that all the narratives in your films can be seen to plough three distinct themes, the post— apartheid, post— holocaust and postcolonial because you come from a family descended from lithuanian dues who went to south africa. is that a fair comment dues. they are fair comment because it is

up they are fair comment because it is up to the audience to create their own narrative. it's a matter of the associations people bring to the films and what is there. example, there was wondering i had which my headit there was wondering i had which my head it was a soft curtain around a hospital bed and the present game up to me and said i love the fact that have drawn my squatters shack with the corrugated rn around with a person is lying. with the mining one, there are photographs of people under showers, masses of man showering before coming back from the mines. is that redolent of what tragically happens in our sweats? the mines. is that redolent of what tragically happens in our sweats7m is but i was drawing a mine, people showering in a mine based on research i did on the mind. when you see a group of people standing under showers, all those other associations and he wears a pinstripe suit because the shock is quite crude and some people read thatis quite crude and some people read that is being echoes of the stripes of the pyjamas of the concentration

camps also it was never in my head but that's not to say that association could not be there. i'm also always interested in the ways different ways the workers read and somethings echo for me and something echo less. the question of colonialism, some think that finishing the 19605 with the independence of african countries, it is clear that while the legacy of apartheid i5 it is clear that while the legacy of apartheid is still where we are, the aftermath of colonialism continues and the paradoxes and contradictions of that are still so central in south african and/or african my. . for example? do you mean? the peace of most recently done is about africa in the first world war and there was a debate, a strong conflict tween african leaders at the time, 5aying, "do we believe we have the right to fight in this war and are the equal of white soldiers fighting in this and be taken seriously and after the war will be given equal civic right5 seriously and after the war will be given equal civic rights to the french soldiers because we are fighting with them in the trenches?"

which they weren't. which they weren't, and at the same time the french leaders were saying let the banker5 french leaders were saying let the bankers and the soldiers and others go and kill each other, nothing to do with us. the sense of push and pull and not wanting to be a part, are we part of it? or do we say this i5 are we part of it? or do we say this is the outside world and what it's done and we reject it. that's a confrontation very much of our era. how does that confrontation effect you? there you are, a member of the white... privileged community... privileged community in south africa, and yet, as we said, your family were very keen opponents of apartheid and you are and so on and so forth. do you feel guilt on the one hand that you are the beneficiary of white privilege? does yourjewishness have a role to play? one of the things about white guilt, let it be said, is how rare it is for people who rarely failed badly in themselves about what happened.

there are remarkable people who are tortured by the sense of... there's a sense of responsibility for it but for me there's a sense of re5pon5ibility for me there's a sense of responsibility to the community in which i work on the which is the community of artists, actor5, performers... but yourjewishness is significant, isn't it? let me tell you, judy hecker, who cocreated one of your exhibitions at the museum of modern art in new york about a decade ago, said, "there's no question william kentridge is influenced by hisjewishness. the notion of the oppressed and the oppressor, the holocaust must have something to do with that". is that right? allow i think within the anti—apartheid struggle in south africa, there was always over representation numerically of dues involved both in the leadership and in the struggle in a broad away. there's also many jews in the struggle in a broad away. there's also manyjews that made a lot of money and did very well out

of the apartheid system, both things, but there was a large number and partly that must have come from... not such firsthand in south africa but familial knowledge of what happened in germany and eastern europe both beforejews came to south africa at the end of the 19th century escaping pogroms in czarist russia, and then what happened in central europe in the middle part of the last century. i'm sure that's pa rt the last century. i'm sure that's part of the reason why there's a sense of acknowledgement of the vulnerability of a victim, of people who are under the sway of power around them. so yourjewishness does help you understand the psyche of the black south african and how they suffered after the apartheid system? i understand the psyche. it helps me sympathise. and yet, william kentridge, here we are talking about how the situation in south africa, apartheid, how the holocaust has influenced your work but you said

you're only an artist and yourjob is to make drawings, not to make sense. surely your art does make sense? or can make sense but it makes sense from the position that it does not have to, it does not start by saying, "this is the essay". though many art schools write the essay about what the meaning is and then find out how to express it and then execute and then it becomes an illustration of the idea. if you have confidence in the work and confidence in the layers of thinking and experience of what you have, you have to believe that through this rather stupid process, this process of drawing, cutting, tearing, the meaning will emerge, and at that at the end of the work will not be without meaning and will have a sense. i think the studio has to bea have a sense. i think the studio has to be a safe space for uncertainty, doubt and stupidity. but when you work as an opera director, you've directed operas, most recently at the met and so on, that's a very

different kind of discipline for you, isn't it? because you're already working with a known body of work? for every opera there has to bea work? for every opera there has to be a theme, opera i'm interested in, the instability of desire, the first world war, the terror of hierarchy, these are larger things. the primary activity of making the opera or the month in the studio here doing the drawings and preparing the projections and finding the language. once you get into rehearsal, yes, you have the specific operator and specific music, and it is a constraint, and it's also a pleasure. i mean, there's nothing nicer than being in there's nothing nicer than being in the rehearsal room with these astonishing voices close—up singing that music. and a central theme in your work is to follow the less good idea, and in fa ct to follow the less good idea, and in fact you set up the centre for the less good idea to help young black artists in south africa, obviously,

what do you mean by follow the less goodidea? what do you mean by follow the less good idea? how does that feed into this centre? the principle of it, and it comes theatre productions is to bring many different artists, actors, choreographers mithali makers together to work on it. the principle is you start with an idea, an impulse, not randoms, but when you follow that idea and you start making the drawing, when you start rehearsing with actors, when you start working with musicians, there are old things you see at the edges of that process. an improvisation at the end of the part you've been carefully rehearsing that suddenly catches you and you reckon i something in them that holds you and you can start to actually pull that into the centre and what is in the periphery can come into the centre. in fact, you discover these peripheral ideas can be central ideas. i think it also, for me, has a political implication. when the huge political ideas of the world:

dominus, the end of history, u nfettered dominus, the end of history, unfettered capitalism, we see the calamitous results of the grand ideas, of those certainties. when things politically one has to hope for things to imagine an organic small away from the edges as way of thinking about robinson. one of the centre's organisers said in order to qualify for grants and public funding, artists must prove the positive impact of their art and incorporate a community—based taste outreach programme of some kind. yes, that's not us. that's not what we do. that's what you do if you're looking for public funding, you have to show this drawing... she's one of the organisers of your centre. she's saying that's the way public funding works. you don't approve of that? no, that's not what we do. that's the point, you're not going to get the point, you're not going to get the support unless you do that? we have to get it in different ways because the whole point is to say

yes, that's one way of working, but for all the artists involved in that, you have the chance to say this is the impulse i have, this is a question i want to invoke, i can't prove an instrumental good... i've got a poem about the state of the nation and the soundtrack goes with it and chaos of what it is to be the young black woman in south africa at the moment. this is a platform where without. .. in a the moment. this is a platform where without... in a fundamentally we believe all these activities are vital for how society understands itself, but to reduce them to the quantifiable instrumental good is to wea ken quantifiable instrumental good is to weaken them from the beginning and to halt the impulse of the actors, artists and singers. you are one of four children, your three siblings or left south africa, you were the only one who remained. your two shoulder and are here. what is your ta ke shoulder and are here. what is your take on johannesburg, south shoulder and are here. what is your take onjohannesburg, south africa?

where is it at? i would say i'm cautiously pessimistic but i don't think you can be an optimist or pessimist in south africa and you claim one or the other is to miss what's going on here. for every bad thing and decision that's happening there is extraordinary projects and impulses beginning. to say those great projects and extraordinary energy and good will that still exists after so little has changed for so many people in south africa, to only see that and not see the damage done also is also crazy. it's not to say you're sitting on the fence, it is to understand there is not a fence. there are two parallel paths unfolding of a future and to be aware of the country in its fullest way, we have to be aware of the two different parts at the same time. william kentridge, thank you very much indeed for coming on hardtalk.

hello. recent days have brought a real mix of weather. it's that sort of time of year and we will continue in that vein in the days to come, so if you do not like what you are getting on one day, hang on and it is sure to change. we start bright and crisp with a little frost around perhaps for some eastern areas, even that will change because the weather system towards the west of the british isles creeps its way ever further towards the east. initially spreading a veil of cloud across western areas after a bright enough start, a couple of showers running ahead of the main rain area.

after lunchtime the rain will be all over northern ireland, by mid—afternoon it will be over western scotland, western england and much of wales too. out east, you will lose your sunshine but you will stay dry until later on in the day. temperatures maxing out at around 10 degrees. part of the problem is that once it starts raining, because we've not got one system but two, it may well continue to rain and there are concerns from the met office who have issued yellow warnings already for the intensity of rain across parts of wales and indeed the north—west of england, because on tuesday some of that rain keeps on coming on what will be a blustery day across the british isles here. the wind gusts for you, you can see widely 30, 40, perhaps 50mph in the exposed locations. the air is coming from the atlantic and if the cloud should break across the eastern side of england, in particular, perhaps 14, 15, 16. reaching in the norfolk area you could look at 17 degrees.

exceptional for the time of year. that weather front taking time to pull away but notice that the isobars almost run straight through the weather front, so there's no great change in the airmass. as the front slips away, the sunshine comes out across the greater part of england and wales. plenty of wintry showers across the higher ground of scotland on another breezy sort of day, but, as i say, the wind is coming from the south—west so we will keep it feeling relatively springlike and mild across the south with temperatures 11—14, much chillier when you get the showers in the heart of scotland — five, six, seven degrees only here. into thursday, we will push this weather front down and across the southern half of the british isles, and that i think that will really freshen things up. plenty of wintry showers again across the higher ground of scotland, a couple of showers in northern ireland, but once the rain slips away from the southern counties of england then essentially a dry fine day, but that bit fresher. we return to the temperatures we saw on monday and we get them again on thursday.

hello and welcome to newsday. i'm kasia madera in london. our main headlines: italy sees a sharp rise in the number of deaths from the coronavirus, as a quarter of the population is in partial lockdown. you can see just how empty it is. the coronavirus measures and fear have hit every part of society. we're looking at what lessons europe could learn from asia as controls against the outbreak enter a new phase. and i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. also on the programme: surviving deadly religious riots in delhi. we go to meet some displaced muslims to find out what lies ahead for them. residents for this area had to flee, save their lives before rampaging mobs arrived, torched their homes,