Learning from Pina

Why you should go see Wim Wender's film about Pina Bausch's dance theater in Wuppertal...

one.

You're an animator. You are interested in the expressiveness of motion and gesture and fascinated by the way that minute details and timing can create very, very different perceptions. Pina Bausch has been choreographing a crew of hard-working dancers for nearly 40 years and they have been studying exactly that in a very intense form. The result is a souvereignity of performance that ranges from the delightfully clownish to intense existential - all expressed without a word.

two.

You're an animator. You search a premise and whittle it down, looking for its essence, cutting away so that nothing is there that is too much... but pasting back on or adding new textures, so that it hit the mark, and exactly that mark, with no visual and no plot point more than is necessary to reach the hearts of your audience. Ditto. 40 years of experience, multiplied by Wim Wenders' own relentless search.

three.

You're an animator and keen to see a subdued approach to stereoscopic film-making. You want to see a spacial film that works more often than not because it gives you time to feel the space pulled out in front of you. Most Hollywood films won't afford to give you time to orient yourself in this new way of experiencing space, and while I have some reservations about the use of stereoscopic depth and focus in a few scenes, I feel grateful to have been exposed to a film that takes its time with the medium.

four.

You're human. This is your cultural heritage. Pina Bausch died unexpectedly in 2009. This is a glimpse of the vast exploration she undertook on this planet.

Pina, by Wim Wenders [1]