The National Sculpture Factory is delighted to present three films by artists Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca for this year’s Cork International Film Festival 2022.

One Hundred Steps 30 mins, 2020

The eighth collaborative film of Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca references the work of Bob Quinn, Irish filmmaker whose productions in the 1980’s were dedicated to deconstructing the hegemonic Eurocentric imaginary and elaborating on the role that North African cultures have played in the formation of Irish culture.

The film invites the viewer to enter its narrative through two distinct and seemingly mirrored chapters. The first is set at a sumptuous 17th century Anglo-Irish colonial manor of the landlord class, located in the South of Ireland, and the  latter at a 19th century stately mansion built by a bourgeois French family, located in the center of Marseille, in the South of France. Here, the museum visitors transform into performers, where musical contributions act as ephemeral occupations of these loaded settings, denying a simplified relationship between the European and the Other, and pivoting the power relations of who is doing the telling and who must listen.

Swinguerra 21 mins, 2019

Swinguerra was commissioned for the Brazilian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale and comprises a two-channel video installation and a series of photographs. The work was developed in close collaboration with dance groups from the outskirts of Recife, Northeast of Brazil, and follows their intense routine of rehearsals performing rhythms such as brega funk, batidão do maloka and swingueira – referenced in the work’s title, but with a slight spelling twist that makes the word end in “guerra”, which means “war” in Portuguese. Although apart from the mainstream, these dance styles are a popular phenomena in their communities and their origins date back to the country’s cultural traditions. Amidst the current tensions concerning the political rights of minorities – mainly black people, women, and transgenders, like many of the characters portrayed –, dance becomes a platform for issues such as social integration and self-representation. Once in front of the camera, the dancers play the role of themselves, thus revealing the knowledge carried in their bodies.

Terremoto Santo / Holy Tremor 19 mins, 2017

With a strong interest on the impact of the accelerated growth of evangelical religions in a state that until the 1980s had a population of believers mostly divided between catholic and African religions, ‘Terremoto Santo’ is a musical that observes the gestures and the voice of people who see in religion a new form of entrepreneurship. ‘Terremoto Santo’ focus on a young generation of preachers, musicians, singers, composers and producers of Gospel music living in the rural area of Pernambuco. The film takes into account the moral, ethic and aesthetic elements of their religious practice expressed through the music they make and their relationship with space, media, pop culture and desire, observing closely their faith in obtaining economic well-being through their belief.

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Bárbara Wagner: Brasília, Brazil, 1980 | Benjamin de Burca: Munich, Germany, 1975

Working together for over a decade, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca produce videos and video installations in dialog with other artists and collectives. The duo has developed a research method according to documentary observation and investigation, constructing the direction, screenwriting, costumes, and soundtracks in collaboration with the protagonists of each project. This horizontal way of working is crucial for transmitting the frequently urgent, socially and historically determined content of their audiovisual investigation. Even in their incursions into other modes of making, such as woodcutting, social types and political friction are still formative elements of the discourse presented.