Pina | |
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tanzt, tanzt sonst sind wir verloren
(dance, dance otherwise we are lost) |
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Directed by | Wim Wenders |
Produced by | Jeremy Thomas |
Written by | Wim Wenders |
Starring | Pina Bausch |
Music by | Thomas Hanreich |
Release date
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Running time
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106 minutes |
Country | Germany |
Language |
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Box office | $14.6 million |
Pina is a 2011 German 3D documentary film about the contemporary dance choreographer Pina Bausch. It was directed by Wim Wenders. The film premiered out of competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival.
During the preparation of the documentary, Pina Bausch died unexpectedly. Wenders cancelled the film production, but the other dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal convinced him to make the film anyway. It showcases these dancers, who talk about Pina and perform some of her best-known pieces inside the Tanztheater Wuppertal and in various outdoor locations around the city of Wuppertal.
The film presents extracts from some of the most noted dance pieces by Pina Bausch in the Tanztheater ("dance theater") style of which Bausch was a leading exponent. The extracts are from four pieces: Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), Café Müller, Kontakthof, and Vollmond. These are complemented with interviews and further dance choreographies, which were shot in and around Wuppertal, Germany; the film includes scenes showing the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, an elevated railway, and some dance sequences take place inside its carriages.
In the first piece, Le sacre du printemps (Frühlingsopfer, The Rite of Spring) (1975), the dancers of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, separated into male and female groups, move about a stage covered by a thick layer of peat.
The following section, Café Müller (1978), portrays a café Pina often visited when she was a child. In a simple setting consisting of some tables and chairs and doors, a small woman dressed in white is entering the café. Two more women, one of whom is obviously blind, appear. They hesitate to step further, as the tables and chairs are obstructing their way. Two men come around and try to remove these barriers. Eventually the blind woman and one of the men stand face to face. The second woman wraps her arms around the other men, but she slips. This part repeats and seems to remain in a loop.