Wim Wenders’ tribute to the late choreographer-dancer Pina Bausch stages some of her best-known pieces in thrilling 3D. “The camerawork is as sublime as the performances… It’s a beautiful and moving film.” — Time Out
Wenders’ mesmerising dance-documentary fusion proves that a third dimension can be much more than icing on the cake.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2011
Pina 2011
“Pina, Wim Wenders’ 3D tribute to the late choreographer-dancer Pina Bausch, was thrilling and revelatory. As a spectator, to be positioned by the camera above, beside and amid the dancers of Bausch’s Wuppertal troupe is not unlike floating bodiless through more solid phantoms. All of Bausch’s best-known pieces are present: her interpretation of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’, in which feral single-sex gangs stomp on a layer of brown earth, or her ‘Café Müller’, where female dancers staggering about with closed eyes have faith that male partners will remove chairs from their path. Wenders sets several dances – and purists may baulk at this – in spectacular outdoor locations; for me the experience was nothing but uplifting.” — Nick James, The Observer
“Pina is the Paris, Texas director’s best work since Buena Vista Social Club… It’s both a tribute to an artist and a celebration of an art form… The camerawork is as sublime as the performances. The decision to avoid most archive footage and other biographical tropes and focus simply on the glory of the work, living and breathing now, is a wise one. It’s a beautiful and moving film.” — Dave Calhoun, Time Out
“Pina Bausch was one of the world’s most radical and influential dance-makers. So it seems entirely fitting that the film made in tribute to her by director Wim Wenders should be the first to suggest the real artistic possibilities of 3D… If you have any interest in film, dance, or culture in general, you should make sure you see it.” — Sarah Crompton, The Telegraph