Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca

Inspiration for One Hundred Steps (2020) came from Irish filmmaker Bob Quinn’s documentaries about the historical relationship between Ireland and North Africa. According to Quinn, who makes a cameo appearance in the film, Africa and Ireland share origins in a common ‘Atlantic’ culture. The specific cadence of traditional Irish singing, for instance, is said to have distinctly Arabic dynamics. In a fasci-nating way the artists employed that idea and thereby reconnected the two cultures through the ages and via music. The first segment takes place in a 17th-century Irish manor, the second in a stately 19th-century Marseille villa. Gradually the camera takes us through the rooms and corridors of the two houses, which now function as museums. The Irish and North African visitors who wander about in these historic surroundings soon prove to be folk musicians; together they literally breathe new life into the rhythms and sounds of the ‘Atlantic’ culture.

This surprising and compelling docufiction was awarded Germany’s Golden Lola for best experimental short film in 2021. But actually words are inadequate here, for if anything becomes clear with One Hundred Steps, it is that music, as an art form, has an unsurpassed capacity for direct expression and human connection.