Tuesday
Feb072012
PINA - A film for PINA BAUSCH by WIM WENDERS.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 8:58PM "Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost." - Pina Bausch
PINA is a 3D modern dance film directed by Wim Wenders for his good friend, Pina Bausch, a legendary German dancer/choreographer most known for her expressive and highly unusual Tanztheater pieces. "Tanztheater" refers to a performance form that integrates dance, speaking, singing and chanting, conventional theater and the use of props, set, and costumes.
Pina died suddenly in the summer of 2009, only five days after her cancer diagnosis and two days before the scheduled shooting of this film.
It was the end of the project. Period. I pulled the plug an hour after we got the call that Pina had died. I called the co-production partners, the financing partners, the crew, everybody, and said, “No more movie. It’s over.” Pina and I really had wanted to make this together. We had dreamed of this for more than twenty years, and to do it without her was completely out of the question. I canceled it without the intention of ever working on it again. But her dancers didn’t stop: Even on the night Pina died, they performed. They were crying, but they did it. They decided to continue as a company and fulfill all of the obligations that Pina had going on for the next two years, tours and performances. Then it dawned on me that maybe there was a reason to continue. If I couldn’t make the movie with Pina anymore, perhaps the dancers and I could make a film for Pina — and in a strange way, for ourselves, too. None of the dancers had been able to say good-bye or thank-you to Pina. Her death was so sudden, and had just pulled the carpet from under all of them. I figured that in preserving these pieces and making this film together, there was a way to come to terms with the loss and sorrow.
PINA in 3D is currently showing in select theatres, including the IFC Center in the West Village in NYC. Definitely worth checking out.
