Pina<\/em> is part performance movie, part elegy and \u2013 thanks to its mindblowing use of the third dimension \u2013 part fairground ride. It centers around four live recordings of Bausch\u2019s work, performed by her dance company and filmed with an elaborate crane apparatus that takes the viewer within inches of the panting, sweating and wildly thrashing performers. <\/p>\nThe 3D is beautiful \u2013 perhaps the most sophisticated, subtle, and immersive use of this emerging technology that has ever been accomplished. But the film\u2019s history is a troubled one. Wenders and Bausch, who first met in 1985, had been talking about making a film together ever since, with little progress made because of Wenders\u2019 concern that traditional cinema could hardly do justice to the sheer power of Bausch\u2019s work. \u201cAnybody I ever took to see a play of Pina\u2019s \u2013 even tough guys who said, \u2018Oh, dance is not for me, you\u2019re out of your mind\u2019 \u2013 they sat next to me and they started weeping because they could not believe that Pina\u2019s work could concern them that much,\u201d he says, abstractedly sipping tea at London\u2019s Cavendish Hotel. It was only when Wenders encountered this decade\u2019s obsession \u2013 3D cinema \u2013 via U2\u2019s U2-3D film at Cannes Film Festival in 2007, that he thought \u201cthat maybe that would put me in a position to participate more. Let people participate in a different way.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s when we really started to prepare,\u201d he says, \u201cwhen we decided we would do it with this unknown technology.\u201d <\/p>\n
By 2009, Wenders was set to film the first few 3D test shots with Bausch. But then, completely without warning, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and died five days later. \u201cFor me, the movie was over,\u201d says Wenders. \u201cIt was only weeks later that it dawned on us that it really was wrong not to do it. The dancers had given us an example \u2013 they had even danced the night that she died. They performed crying their hearts out, saying Pina had taught them, in spite of everything, to dance.\u201d <\/p>\n
So Wenders embarked on a new, unknown film. \u201cEven the concept that Pina and I had put together was quite an elaborate one,\u201d he says. \u201cThen that concept was down the drain and it was really flying with no instruments.\u201d What he ended up with, after months of struggling with his massive 3D cameras \u2013 and their initial inability to capture the explosive movements of Bausch\u2019s troupe without flickering and strobing \u2013 is a solemn, but poetic tribute to a woman who found a new, physical language to communicate the pain and adulation of human existence, composed from snippets of performance, archive footage, and interviews with Bausch\u2019s troupe of longtime collaborators and friends. \u201cI think what really connected us was a sense of research, and starting from reality, whatever was coming out of it,\u201d Wenders says of his relation to Bausch \u201cAll of Pina\u2019s work started, radically, from experience. With improvisation and going deeper and deeper. Then she turned what she found into a dance.\u201d <\/p>\n
As if to emphasize this connection between Bausch\u2019s Tanztheater and the keenly felt emotions of everyday life, Wenders also punctuated Pina with scenes of dancers performing in mundane locations around Wupperthal, the home of the Pina Bausch troupe, enacting the snippets of her work to which they are most deeply connected. At one point, one of Bausch\u2019s disciples stomps around the gliding carriage of the city\u2019s funicular rail service, devastating, explosive noises emanating from behind a thick mass of hair thrown over her face. At another, a graceful duet unfolds under a concrete overpass. It\u2019s at times devastating, but always, thanks to those dorky 3D spectacles, completely entrancing. \u201c It goes to show that 3D can be taken seriously as a medium,\u201d says Wenders. \u201cI\u2019m totally convinced.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pina was released April 22.<\/em><\/p>\nThis article first appeared in<\/em> Wonderland Issue 26, April\/May 2011<\/em><\/p>\nWords: Adam Welch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wim Wenders has stepped into the third dimension with his latest film Pina, a first in the European Art Cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":868,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9416],"tags":[261,427,84,54,50,424,425,426,423],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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