20 1 Sight & Sound May2 201.

Wim Wenders's newfilm 'Pina'marks notjust the culmination ofa 2o-jear quest tofilmthe work ofchoreographerPina Bausch, but also a bold leap into the world of3D. He talksto Nick James, while overleaf Nick Roddick examines the director's life in documentary

MOTION PICTURESt would be hard to find a more centralfigure in modern European cinema thanWim Wenders. A key director of the NewGerman Cinema of the I 97os, he has beenmaking films all over the world for 44years, and is nowadays the president of theEuropean Film Academy. Yet of late hiscritical reputation has reached its lowestpoint. Even though his most recentdramatic feature Palermo Shooting (2008)

was in competition in Cannes, it was very poorlyreceived by critics (myself included). Apart froma brief flurry of excitement surrounding his 1998documentary Buena Vista Social Club, he hasgenerally come to be regarded - at least amongUK and US critics- as a once-important directorwho has lost his way.

That reputation does not, however, dim one'smemories of the period when he was, at the veryleast, an important- and very fashionable- creatorof road movies and other films that seemed tocapture the zeitgeist, especially for rock-music fanswhose taste extended, like his, from The Kinks andRy Cooder to Elvis Costello and U2. His run offeatures that includes The Goalkeeper's Fear of thePenalty (197 1), Alice in the Cities (19 74), Kings of theRoad(1976), The American Friend (19 78), The State ofThings (1982), Hammett (1982), Paris, Texas (1984)and Wings of Desire (1987) provides a vivid cata-logue of the junkyard of cultural fascinations inthose years, especially the shared European notion

- stated in Kings of the Road- that the Americanshad "colonised our unconscious".

By 1990 Wenders was so successful that it wasalready fashionable to knock him. In a then-definitive documentary about him, Paul Joyce'sMotion and Emotion: The Films of Wim Wenders, theGerman critic Kraft Wetzel nailed the director'stendency to marvel at whatever he didn't under-stand, saying that Wenders's attitudes could besummed up as follows: "Aren't women myste-rious? Aren't children wonderful in their innocentwisdom? Let's put on another record." Amusingthough that quotation is, it demonstrates the suspi-cion that's often aroused by any filmmaker whoshows too great an enthusiasm for the work ofothers - and Wenders's career can be seen as aseries of tributes to figures he admires (see p.24) asmuch as a pursuit of his own aesthetic.

That boyish aura of the fan who can't quitebelieve the tremendous things he's experiencingpersists in Wenders today, at the age of 65 - and ithas now led him to make what is, for me, athrilling 3D movie: Pina. Initially conceived as acollaboration with the German dancer-choreogra-pher Pina Bausch, it became instead his tribute toher following her untimely death in 2009.

A member of the same generation as Wenders-and as much an international cultural superstar ashe is - Bausch studied dance in Essen in the earlyi96os under the tutelage of Kurt Jooss, a veteran ofthe Weimar Republic's expressionist school of m

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FARAWAY, SO CLOSEPina Bausch, above,died in 2009, daysbefore Wim Wenders,top right, startedshooting her work -including the dancepiece 'Vollmond', left -for his film 'Pina'

Wim Wenders Pina

n dance. After stints studying and performing in theUS, she went on to join looss's Folkwang BalletCompany. Eventually she became a choreographerherself, succeeding Jooss as the artistic director ofthe Folkwangschule. But it was after Bausch trans-ferred her skills to the Wuppertal Opera Ballet(later renamed the Tanztheater) in 1972 that shebegan to make an international impact, especiallywith her two early signature pieces, 'The Rite ofSpring'(1975) and 'Cafe MOller' (1978).

'The Rite of Spring', set to Stravinsky's still star-tlingly modernist ballet score of 1913, consists oftwo explosive yet impressively synchronised tribalgroups- the men stripped to the waist, the womenwearing shifts - stomping a sacrificial ritual intobrown earth. 'Cafe Mufller', set to parts of Purcell'sopera Dido and Aeneas, has female dancers withtheir eyes closed tottering their way through a caf6scene while male dancers do their best to removeimpeding tables and chairs before collisions occur.I've seen these pieces performed at Sadler's Wellsand, while I'm no ballet aficionado, I can testify totheir remarkable power - and appreciate howstrong the temptation would be to capture theseevents on film. But this was a lure that Wendersresisted for some time, as he testifies below.

Long before she finally persuaded Wenders todocument her best pieces, however, Bausch herselfhad strong connections to the cinema in her ownright. Excerpts of her performance at the NancyWorld Theatre Festival feature in WernerSchroeter's characteristically eloquent documen-tary record Die Generalprobe (Dress Rehearsal, 1980)- a clip from which appears in Wenders's film. Sheplayed the part of a blind princess in Fellini's Andthe Ship Sails On (1983), and her pieces 'Cafe Mtiller'and 'Masurca Fogo' form an important element inAlmodovar's study of communication betweenthe sexes, Talk to Her(2002). She herself directedjust one film, The Lament of the Empress (i99o),which - as we shall see - proved crucial to

Wenders's decision to take her dancers outside theauditorium for the second half of his film.

Pina is made up of two separate elements: thefirst a 3D record of four of Bausch's major stagepieces ('The Rite of Spring', 'Caf6 Miller', 'Voll-mond' and'Kontakthof'), the second a series of soloand duet dances filmed outdoors in Wuppertal andthe surrounding area. The film is not entirely freefrom some of Wenders's characteristic peccadil-loes: it is sometimes sentimental and reverent in away that the austere Bausch, one imagines, mightnot have felt comfortable with. Purists may alsoquibble with the freedom of interpretation that thedirector allows himself. Yet what's most excitingabout Pina is the way you can experience Wendersand his team feeling their way towards an expres-sion of movement and space that has not beentechnically possible until now.Nick Jaes When you first set out to make this film withPina Bausch, were there any ground rules you set your-self for how to approach her dance pieces?Wim Wenders: There were a few ground rules thatPina established herself. First: no biographicalapproach - she wanted the emphasis to be on herpieces and on her work, not on her as a person. Andthe second: no interviews! Pina was never at easeexplaining or interpreting her work. When shetalked, you always felt like she knew she wasbetraying her real gift.NJ: Am I right in thinking you'd never shot any dancesequences before making 'Pina'?W. I never did. When we started talking about thefilm we wanted to do together, and I contemplatedhow I could possibly shoot it, I looked at a lot ofdance movies. Pina and I also looked at the worksof hers that had been recorded already. I couldn'thelp noticing that she wasn't happy with them.She felt that there should be some different way todo it! I had to tell her honestly that I didn't knowhow to do it much better. I could do wide shots andtravelling shots, the camera could be handheld or

'With this technology one could dojustice to dance - one could enterthe very realm of the dancers: space'

shoot from a crane - I could perhaps do a littlebetter here and there. But I couldn't do it essentiallybetter than what there was before.

But I realised she had higher expectations. Thatreally scared me, especially because we were goodfriends. I didn't want to disappoint her. So I endedup telling her I needed more time, until I under-stood how her art could be filmed.NJ: Were there films of other people's dances she liked?WW. She figured we should start from scratch withthe whole business of recording her work. Ofcourse I saw everything she'd done - and in Pina'spieces there is something special going on. I don'tknow if you ever saw one live?NJ: Yes, I saw 'The Rite of Spring' and 'Cafe Mfller' atSadler's Wells in London 2008.WW Those are the classical pieces, but already with

'Cafe Miller' let alone in any of her newer pieces- there is something about the sheer physicality ofher dancers that is so contagious! You can feeleverything they're doing in your own body, muchmore than you can when you're watching othertypes of dance. Even though 'Cafe Miller' is sucha sober piece, to say the least, there is such an exis-tential intensity -behind all that pain -that I felt Icouldn't really capture on film. There was thisunique quality in her pieces - even more so in hernewer works like 'Vollmond'- that really jumpedat you as a viewer. I always felt that whateverhappened on stage really concerned me, reallydealt with me, with all of us sitting there watching.And I told Pina that my cameras could not touchthat - could never convey that immediacy, thatjoyfulness, that complicity. I felt I was in front of aninvisible wall I could not cross.

Pina was saddened by my saying so, but shepushed me to continue thinking, so the next timewe saw each other she would look at me hopefullyand say, "And have you figured out how to shootit?" And I always had to admit I still did not knowhow. At any given moment during these 20 yearsI would have dropped everything I was doing tomake this movie with her, but I was waiting forthat breakthrough that didn't come. I felt it was myown 'director's block'.

But Pina didn't give up on me. And it became amore and more urgent matter, because she wasoverburdened by the amount of pieces she hadcreated and the fact that these pieces would onlycontinue to live if she continued to perform them.Dance theatre has no other life - you can't write itdown. Her desire for us to make a movie was alsoher desire to find out if there was a way to preservea piece other than by always continuing toperform it.

The revelation finally did not come fromanything I made up conceptually, but from tech-nology - from a place I had expected it least. WhenI saw the first [live-action] digital 3D film, U2 3D-the precursor of the new craze- I realised that wasthe answer! I'd never thought of 3D as a solution inall these 20 years, but there it was. With this tech-nology one could do justice to dance - one couldenter the very realm of the dancers: space. Onecould finally shoot Pina's dance theatre in anessentially different way! From that moment on, inthe summer of 2007, we started preparing actively.NJ: Was this before the 3D piece 'if Buildings Could Talk'you made for the Architecture Biennale in Venice?

22 Sight & Sound May

WW: We did that piece after my Pina shoot, imme-diately before the Biennale in June 2009. After ayear of shooting Pina we had finally developed aprototype of Steadicam equipment for 3D that wasso light and flexible it allowed me to do that littlefilm in which my cameraman walked and ranthrough that building [the Rolex Learning Centerin Lausanne] for two days.NJ: One thing that's very beautiful in Pina' is the waycertain moves that are specific to certain dancers looklike levitation - you do a little edit sometimes to accen-tuate that movement. It must have been an excitingthing to discover.WW: That was my job, to accentuate Pina's work asmuch as possible and film it so it would look itsbest in this new 3D medium. It meant we had toknow every second of the pieces by heart, so as toposition the camera at the one angle that wouldshow that second off to the best advantage,without us having to cut like maniacs.NJ: How did you find shooting in 3D?WW: I'd never shot anything in 3D except for thetests we'd done. When we finally started to shoot,Pina was no longer standing next to me. She couldno longer view it as we had planned or give heropinion or advice, so all the time I had to look overmy shoulder and ask myself, "Is that what Ipromised her? Was it good enough?!"

We made a lot of discoveries with 3D. We startedshooting very conservatively, in front of the stage.Only then did we slowly allow ourselves to moveon to the stage. Our equipment was still very heavy- this huge techno-crane -but we learned how tomove it and slowly the point of view got closer tothe dancers. When we started to move the cameraand to fly it over and into the stage I discovered awhole different architecture to the pieces. I hadseen 'Cafe Mifller' countless times, but I did notknow how perfectly it was constructed- it had aninterior logic that I hadn't really grasped before. Ibecame more and more in awe of Pina's gift. Thatwas the privilege of 3D: you could take the viewerto these positions from where you're not usuallyallowed to watch.NJ: In 'Pina' there's an astonishing freedom of cameramovement in relation to the bodies. Classically, in 2Dfilms, you're supposed to let dancers dance, and you justhold the shot on them, whereas with this film there's adynamic between how the camera is moving and how thedancer is moving.WW: But Pina's art has such freedom anyway, and3D was so new there was an inbuilt freedom. Andof course there was space. That discovery of 'space'was part of the film, and the physicality of thosedancers was part of the discovery. I could not havehad the freedom to make this film without 3D. In3D there is this other dimension: the film is insidethe dancers' very own realm.NJ: Has 'Pina' been shown at an IMAX?WW: They're playing it on a gigantic screen in oneIMAX in Niirnberg. You're just not supposed to sittoo close. You have to sit in the middle ground,otherwise it gets just too overwhelming.NJ: The IMAX in London has a terrific sound system.WW: We worked hard on the sound. The toughestthing was to get a studio big enough to have a realtheatre feeling, where we could also watch it in 3Dwhile we were mixing it. We prepared the mix in a2D mixing stage and then, in the final week, a

theatre with a console put in a 3D screen for us. Allof a sudden we realised that in 3D- because the eyeis guided so differently - you need to hear morefrom wherever your eye is guided to. So we had toremix the whole thing - to invent a wholedifferent approach. Wherever you were guided tolook, you wanted to hear a little more.

I had never mixed in 3D, and when I've seen 3Dmovies I had the feeling that their mix was notdone specifically for 3D. I'm not even sure aboutAvatar. It's probably the same mix as the 2Dversion. But then again, I don't know. I'd like to findout. Back then I couldnrt ask anybody, anyway.

That was one of the funny conditions of thefilm. We had started shooting months beforeAvatar came out, and when it did it was such arelief. We were thrilled, because it meant weweren't doing our film in no man's land. JamesCameron had put the whole medium on the map,and I'm eternally grateful that he did. And we didlearn a lot from Avatar for the second half of theshoot. But I never read anything about how hemixed it. Let's try to find out, especially as themagazine is called Sight & SoundNJ: I'm curious about the second half of the film:the desire to show the city of Wuppertal through theseindividual dances.

BREAK OUTIn the second half of'Pina' Wenders takesBausch's dancersoutdoors, left, afterfilming 'The Rite ofSpring" opposite, andother pieces insidethe theatre

WW: The courage to take the dancers out into thestreet was based on the only film Pina ever madeherself, The Lament of the Empress. I had promised tohelp her with it, but that was the year I did Until theEnd of the World. The Lament of the Empress is prob-ably very rarely shown because, at the time, a lot ofpeople felt Pina should stick to her guns - shoulddo dance and not start doing movies. Pina liked it.I saw it again recently and remembered she did thewhole film off stage, in the city.

So I developed the idea that the second half ofPina should continue her own method, becauseWuppertal is really an essential part of the equa-tion. The city sustained her for 40 years. She couldnot have done this body of work in any big city -not in Berlin, Paris or London. She needed ananonymous city like Wuppertal. Pina oftendescribed how she would watch people in her city- in the supermarkets, on the Schwebebahn [mono-rail] lines or the bus stations - how she always feltshe was inspired by the people in the area. So thecity needed to be in.

The film that we would have done togetherwould have included scenes where Pina was justwatching people. That film we never got to makehad as its subtext or subtitle Pina's Look. It wouldhave been about the way Pina looked at the world. W

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Wim Wenders Documentaries

-0 But I never was able to shoot any footage with her- not even a single close-up.NJ: Wuppertal, of course, features in one of your earliestfeatures. 'Alice and the Cities'WW. Yes, it's very funny that I shot in Wuppertal in1973 at exactly the same time that Pina took overwhat was still the Ballet Wuppertal - a couple ofyears later it became the Tanztheater. But we didn'tknow about each other then. We never met until1985. But I973 was an important year for both ofus, and we spent it in Wuppertal. And Pina hadshown Alice in the Cities repeatedly at her festivals.NJ: Was she really as tough as her reputation has it?WW She was a strange mixture of fragility andtoughness. She was tough mainly with herself, andthat gave her a right to be demanding with others.She really wanted to get the best from everyone,and you don't get the best by just being kind.Elvis Costello sang about that: "You've got to becruel to be kind."NJ: Is your next film going to be 3D?WW: Absolutely. I feel I have only scratched thesurface. We had to learn it all - nobody really couldgive us any advice. My stereographer Alain Derobehad experience: when we started shooting our firsttest in 2008, there wasn't any equipment in Europethat didn't already have his name on it - he hadhandmade each and every rig that was circulating.But his main asset was not that he knew the tech-nology - it was his interest in the physiology ofseeing! Probably a lot of people can tell you how toshoot 3D, but Alain's great gift is that he really wasinterested in how two eyes see and how twocameras come close to translating that.NJ: Have you read Walter Murch's objections to 3D?W* Yes, but I entirely disagree, and I hope that Pinawill convince a few of those people who think it'sa passing gadget to take it seriously as a medium.That's also James Cameron's concern: he's quitepissed off that nobody really took 3D seriouslyafter Avatar. They took it as an attraction, and it'sreally the only [3D] film so far that stands as a hugemasterpiece. He put the bar up high, but since thenthey all just ran underneath it. Nobody even triedto jump over it...NJ: One of the problems with Avatar' for Hollywood mustbe that it took so long to make that it doesn't look like aviable model for an industrial process.W. Yeah, but now 3D is there and it's available fordocumentary filmmakers, and there are small rigsyou can shoot relatively quickly with. And it's notjust an attraction. I was grateful to Alain Derobethat he took me seriously when I said, "Let's makea film where people forget after a few minutes thatit's in 3D. Let's not use any of the effects. Let's keepthe dance itself as the attraction!"

I think 3D deserves to be taken seriously as amedium - in documentary most of all! I feel that'swhere 3D can really make a quantum leap, andvice versa: 3 D will help documentaries to a wholedifferent level. You can take your viewers into theworld of your characters in such a complete andimmersing way! In storytelling, I don't know yet. Iwant to finally write something where the storyitself has an affinity to space. I don't know quitewhat it could be yet, but I'm eager to do it.

E 'Pina'is released on 22 April, and is reviewedon page 67241 Sight & Sound May, 201

THE SPIRITOF THE PLACELessfamous than Wenders'sfeatures,his documentaries show an emotionalresponse to the world, says Nick Roddick

In Hollywood, only mavericks like Scorsese,Demme or Stone have the ability- or inclination- to switch between fiction and documentary. InEurope, it's more normal: with Godard, the line isoften difficult to draw; with Herzog, the quizzicaleye is as likely to settle on something real (under-water, underground) as it is on a fictional char-acter. (Even then, with Kinski and Bruno S, thecharacter is only partially fictional.) But Wendersis a special case: almost a third of his output -rising to nearly a half over the past two decades-has involved looking at the real rather thanmanipulating the fictional.

For him, music has been the focus since thestart. 3 American LPs, the 1969 short he madeimmediately before his graduation featureSummer in the Cit`(V970), is made up of tracks byVan Morrison, Creedence Clearwater Revival andHarvey Mandel. The visuals consist of shotsthrough the windows of a moving car, and thereis a discussion between Wenders and PeterHandke about how American music is aboutemotion rather than sound.

Wonersies wvrat strenth- and sometimes hisweakness - as afilmmaker Is his opennessto emotional stimuli

That, really, is the key: when he's at his best(and even when he isn't), Wenders's imagery isabove all an emotional response to a place -Berlin, Texas, Tokyo, Lisbon, Havana, Los Angeles,Palermo or Butte, Montana - rather than at theservice of a plot, which hardly seems to interesthim. His greatest films, like Kings oftheRoad(1976)and Paris, Texas(1984), are almost plotless. Simi-larly, what he appreciates in the work of the direc-tors he venerates- Nicholas Ray, Ozu, Antonioni- are responses to the world, rather than directo-rial signatures. Sometimes it is a single phrasethat inspires the emotions: "Until the end of theworld..." are the final words spoken in Ray's Kingof Kings, an efficient but journeyman 1961 epicabout the life of Jesus that could hardly be moredifferent from the mix of metaphor and meta-physics that Wenders erected around the phrasein his iggi feature of that name.

There are, of course, some almost 'straight'documentaries, like Buena Vista Social Club andWillieNelson at the Teatro (both 1998). But TheSoulofa Man- Wenders's 2003 film about blues artistsSkip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J.B. Lenoir-

ODE TO HAVANA 'Buena Vista Social Club'

is, in his own words, a "poem" rather than a docu-mentary: not a record of but a response to theemotion in the music. And that music is mainlyAmerican; the only film about a German artistbefore Pina is the little-seen (but well worthseeing) Vielpassiert- DerBAPFilm(Ode to Cologne,2002), about veteran German rock band BAP,which is a lot more than a concert film.

If Wenders's later career has often suggested adirector searching for a subject, his work as awhole has confirmed him as a filmmaker with analmost boundless curiosity. Pina is as good anexample as any: a film embodying an emotionalresponse to the work of another artist, filteredthrough but not dominated by the technology of3D. The film it echoes most is Tokyo-Ga, Wenders's1985 film 'about' Ozu. Here, his commentary onhis own website is revealing. "My trip to Tokyowas in no way a pilgrimage," he says. "I wascurious as to whether I still could track downsomething from this time, whether there was stillanything left of this work. Images perhaps, oreven people..." Substitute 'homage' for'pilgrimage' and you have the key to Wenders'snon-fiction work-- not to record but to respond, atthe risk of offending the purists (which hashappened with Pina). Wenders's great strength -and sometimes his weakness- as a filmmaker ishis openness to emotional stimuli, triggering aneed to find an onscreen equivalent to what hehas felt Credibility, even characters, are secondaryto this - as they are in later features such as TheEnd of Violence (1997) or Palermo Shooting (2oo8).

There is a certain paradox here: Wenders's filmsundeniably have a voice, but that voice comesfrom an artist whose response to the world isalmost sponge-like, soaking up a place or - aswith Pina- the work of another artist. Somethingelse Wenders says about Ozu sums this up quiteneatly: "For me, never before and never againsince has the cinema been so close to its essenceand its purpose: to present an image of man in ourcentury, a usable, true and valid image, in whichhe not only recognizes himself but from which,above all, he may learn about himself." A cinemaof contemplation, then, but based on a great dealmore than mere observation, recreating- as onlycinema can - a moment that is at once fixed intime and timeless.

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