Wim Wenders Discusses ‘Pina’ – A Documentary on Choreographer Pina Bausch

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks to German film director Wim Wenders.

Wenders has a new movie out called “Pina.” It is a documentary about German choreographer Pina Bausch who died a few years ago at the age of 68.

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. A new documentary called “Pina” is a dance film made by a filmmaker who didn’t get dance until he saw the work of German choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch. Acclaimed filmmaker Wim Wenders remembers going to see his first Pina Bausch dance work in the 1980s. It was called Cafe Maller and it featured six characters. Wenders says he had an unexpected revelation.

Wim Wenders: There it was and I realized that these six people on stage told me in 40 minutes more about men and women than the entire history of cinema had done and without a single word and without a plot. And I just sat there and was shaken. And realized something big had happened in my life and that I had had a wrong impression of dance all along. Then again, this wasn’t really dance – this was a strange new thing. I didn’t know what it was I just knew it was magic.

Mullins: Wim Wenders wanted to capture that magic on film. He met Pina and they decided to collaborate. But for the next 20 years, he struggled to find the best way to translate her style of dance into film. Then he went to the movies and had another revelation.
Wenders: And there it was: I saw my first 3D film in the summer 2007. U2 3D it was called. A concert film. Put the glasses on for the first time not expecting much. And there it was. What we been looking for for 20 years. The answer was on the screen. There was finally a tool that commanded space. And finally I could be in the very element of dancers. I could be in their waters, so to speak. I could be with my cameras in their kingdom and that space.

Mullins: So you found the solution, but life took hold. Something happened.

Wenders: Well, we actively together prepared the film. So when we were finally ready, and close to starting to shoot, Pina passed away from one day to another. Really tragically…

Mullins: That was… It was literally within 5 days wasn’t it?

Wenders: Yeah. We just heard one morning Pina passed away.

Mullins: Do you mind telling us what it was? Do you know?

Wenders: It was cancer in a very advanced stage. She had not even a week. So for these dancers it was the unimaginable that Pina was gone. So, I announced to everybody that we’re not gonna make the film anymore, that it was over. And walked away from it. And there wouldn’t be a film now if it hadn’t been weeks later for the dancers who decided to continue as a company. And I had talked with them, you know this doesn’t sound right that you don’t want to do it anymore because Pina was looking forward so much to her pieces being filmed in this new language that the two of you were gonna develop. So walking away is not the right thing. And I realized talking with the dancers that they needed this film more than anything else as a way to come to terms with that loss. So we just decided to make a film for Pina. Couldn’t do the film with Pina anymore.

Mullins: So what we see on the screen, including the scenes of Pina herself who is stunning to look at despite the real heaviness of a lot of the works that she’s doing. She has such a beautiful and kind of simple smile about her. I don’t know if she was lighthearted, if she was intense but maybe you can describe the particluar dance -

Wenders: This is Cafe Maller with Pina herself on stage, six dancers, sleepwalkers, the strange story of attraction and and rejection and love and loss -

Mullins: The dance itself takes place in what’s supposed to be a cafe. There are only tables and chairs – I think black tables and chairs – a few of them around. And I should say you can hear something in particular in this audio. Describe what we’re seeing here.

Wenders: Well, you’re seeing two sleepwalkers who are attracted to each other but they don’t see each other. they seem to want to reach each other but they don’t know how and somebody else intervenes, a third character and he puts the woman into the man’s arms. He’s holding her in his arms and then he’s dropping her as if he doesn’t have the strength. So she falls onto the floor and the 3rd man comes again and puts her back into his arms and again she drops and it gets insanely fast the way she’s being lifted up to his arms and falls to
the ground…

Mullins: Boom! She just goes down every time.

Wenders: It’s really… You are scared for her because she really falls to the ground hard. You don’t really know what’s happening but you realize this is an incredible metaphor about men and women and about trust and love and about losing each other and dropping each other and lifting other up again. It really really gets to you, I tell you. Pina developed this unique system of questions and answers. She would ask her dancers questions about a subject and they were not allowed to answer with words but strictly with their bodies – with movement with gestures with dance. And Pina would work on these answersand drop all the cliches and really come to the core of what everybody had to say. With their bodies to her questions. And we assimilated that process and I asked the dancers questions about how she had seen things in their dances that they didn’t even know themselves. And as I’m not a choreographer I asked them to answer with something that Pina’s eyes had been on and that they had developed together with Pina.

Mullins: Well the affection that the dancers feel for her is unmistakable in the film, you know. There were individual quotes that they would say, that Pina would tell them. You know, like show me – Oh, I know, one of them was “I want you to scare me.” and that was all she said. Almost kind of what you hear about like Woody Allen’s directing. You know, the…

Wenders: [Laughing.] I think they had a lot in common actually.

Mullins: yeah, maybe so. I mean, she would really entrust the dancer to do the right thing, and you could see how inspired the dancer became just at that one suggestion.

Wenders: Yeah, Pina didn’t say much. Actually some of the dancers didn’t get any advice for years. Pina just watched them…

Mullins: For years…

Wenders: …and it would continue. And she herself once said it really amazingly. She said, “I’m not interested in how my dancers move,” I mean that’s unbelieveable for a choreographer to say, “I’m not interested in how my dancers move. I’m interested in what moves them.” And that shows the radical approach by Pina. That she really believed that dance is about us and tells us who we are. And that it is a universal language that we all understand. And she proved it.

Mullins: Did she leave you with one comment in the early part of your filming this that you remember that guided you in making this after her death?

Wenders: Well when we started to talk and develop the film we wanted to do together, Pina very quickly established two ground rules. And even when I made the film without her I stuck to these ground rules. One was no biography. She just wanted it to be about the work. No biography, please. So we refrain from that. And the second one ground rule was no interview. She just hated language and she just hated to talk about the work and explain it or interpret it. So we refain from that as well. There’s no…

Mullins: Did you hate that?

Wenders: I quite agreed with it because dance is some – it is a language. It is completely a language on its own. And to talk about it is sort of doubling it up or taking some of the magic away. So even the few words that I know about Pina and about how the dancers work with Pina – it’s never explanatory. It’s never sort of interpretive.

Mullins: Wim Wenders, a pleasure to talk to you. It was a beautiful film.

Wenders: Thank you, Lisa.

Mullins: “Pina” is director Wim Wenders’ new feature-length 3D film. It celebrates the work of the late German choreographer Pina Bausch. The film opens tonight in New York. You can watch a trailer and see a behind-the-scenes video on the making of “Pina” at theworld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

Trailer of the movie

The Making of Pina – 3D