Pina is a 2011 German 3D dance film directed by Wim Wenders. The film premiered Out of Competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. The trailer features the song "Lilies in the Valley" by Jun Miyake. The film has been selected as the German entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards.
During the preparation of the documentary about Pina Bausch, she died unexpectedly. Wim Wenders cancelled the film production, but the other dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal convinced him to make the film anyway. It now shows these other dancers, talking about her and dancing in her honor, not just in the theater, but most of the time at various outdoor locations.
The film presents some of the most noted dance pieces by Pina Bausch in the Tanztheater ("dance theater") style; Bausch is a leading exponent of Tanztheater, and the film consists of her work, but she is rarely seen in the film, and died prior to the film coming out. The four pieces are titled Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), Café Mueller (a café in the German town of Solingen, where Bausch grew up), Kontakthof, and Vollmond. These are complemented with interviews and further dance choreographies, which were shot in and around Wuppertal, Germany; the film has scenes showing the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, which is also one of the dance locations.
In the first piece, Le sacre du printemps, the dancers of the Tanztheater Wuppertal are moving about an unusual place – the stage is covered by a thick layer of peat, and light moves are impossible on this dance floor. This was intended, because in the ballet a chosen virgin is sacrificed to the god of spring. The following section, Café Mueller, describes a place where Pina often stayed 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 an infinite loop. The piece is about searching.
The next piece, Kontakthof, has dancers of different generations. It describes a situation in dance school at the beginning of 20th century. The piece consists of multiple performances with actors of different ages. The film merges this different performances to one scene, which shows the various abilities of the dancers. In the final piece, Vollmond, the whole stage is flooded. The scenery contains just one large rock and some chairs. At the end of the film, the actors face the audience on a small path with a brown coal mining region in the background to an open end.
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