City Deep is the eleventh film from Drawings for Projection, a series of animation films that William Kentridge has been working on since 1989. City Deep is about so-called Zama zamas, illegal mineworkers who scour abandoned mines for remnants of gold. Kentridge mixes the world of the mineworkers with, among others, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, built during the heyday of the gold industry and colonialism. Drawings for Projection marked Kentridge’s international breakthrough as an engaged artist with a sense of commitment and a concern for developments in his native country. His films illuminate the charged history of South Africa. ‘I have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid’, he once stated. ‘But the drawings and films are certainly spawned by and feed off the brutalized society left in its wake.’