We’ve decided to dedicate the month of August to the life and work of American writer and composer Paul Bowles. Though born in New York City, Bowles remains best known for his decades as an expat in Morocco, where he penned the novel The Sheltering Sky and recorded traditional music believing it to be on the brink of disappearance. Over the next two weeks, we’re delighted to spotlight Tegen Williams’ kaleidoscopic A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard, in which Williams and a group of artists retrace Bowles’ musical travels while documenting their own encounters with local musicians.

Anchored in the percussive rhythms of Berber music, Williams’ documentary offers an update on the communities Bowles first recorded in 1959. A combination of smartphone snapshots, still photographs, archival material, and handheld camerawork, A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard feels like a cinematic collage — a film in constant flux responding to the shapeshifting spirit of the journey on-screen and the music that accompanies it.

“Using photography, handheld cameras and collaged archival material was very much our language at the time, but it lent itself perfectly as a form for this film. We captured as much as we could with each group, so when it came to the edit it felt like an interpretation of the experience. When the pictures are cut with pace, they are cut in response to the music, in essence the music drives everything and the images hope to keep up.” TEGEN WILLIAMS

 

Central to Williams’ travels across Morocco is a map Bowles left behind detailing his own expeditions across the region. This map, featured early in the film, guided Williams and company through the Moroccan desert. Across their travels, they come across numerous dancers, musicians, and festivities that reflect the country’s diverse culture — as seen in the film, this includes traveling Ahaidous music troupes, as well as legendary gnawa guembri players, and many more artistic enclaves. Williams’ cinematic bricolage not only reflects the protean nature of the group’s travels, but the multi-faceted dimension of the territory depicted.

Tegen Williams is a multi-disciplinary artist based in London. She works across several mediums, including photography, film, painting, and fashion. In collaboration with Raf Fellner (cinematographer on A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard), she directed a series of short films riffing on CSI. More recently, she has worked with musicians like King Krule, fashion labels such as Molly Goddard and Wales Bonner, and even launched her own tongue-in-cheek fashion label House of Gourgeosity.

Text written by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer. Special thanks to Tegen Williams and Raf Fellner.