Martinů Festtage 2025 | Cinema

Tuesday 28 October 2025, 7.00 pm
Stadtkino Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Cinema | Life in the Bugatti Step

Screening of the documentary, followed by a panel discussion with Anne-Kathrin Peitz and Jean-Christophe Nigon.

Life in the Rhythm of the Bugatti Step: The Czech Interwar Avant-Garde
Documentary, co-production Germany / Czechia, 2025, 52 min
Production: MDR/ARTE, EuroArts, Czech Television

This documentary by director Anne-Kathrin Peitz charts the musical avant-garde in Czechoslovakia during the interwar period.

Car racer Eliška Junková races from victory to victory in her Bugatti, inspiring composer Jaroslav Ježek to compose the foxtrot Bugatti Step. The virtuoso piano piece becomes a legendary hit in dance halls and among young artists who help shape the history of Czech music in the 1920s and 1930s.

Through the lives and compositions of Erwin Schulhoff, Jaroslav Ježek, Viktor Ullmann, Bohuslav Martinů, and composer and first Czech conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová, this nearly hour-long documentary explores an artistically prolific, colorful, joyful, playful, and experimental chapter in Czech music history set between the two world wars.

The young artists find the sound of jazz, swing, and a touch of exoticism reaching Prague much more appealing than dry evenings of chamber music. The artists inspire each other, discuss, present themselves on an international level, and many of them spend part of their lives and careers in Paris. However, the verve with which these composers threw themselves into life and work was suddenly brought to an end: Prague was occupied by the Nazis and countless artists fell victim to their reign of terror, including the Czech avant-garde.

More information: https://martinu.ch/programm/bugatti-step/