Sightlines · reception
How Pina was received
2011 · Wim Wenders · Pina on Sightlines
The arc
Hailed in 2011 as the film that proved 3D could be art — the year it and Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams turned a gimmick briefly respectable, capped by an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary. Now that 3D is dead, it's remembered wistfully as one of the very few films that actually needed it, and cinephiles mourn that most people can only see it flat.
What’s debated
The perennial fan debate: does Pina survive on a 2D screen at home, or is watching it flat missing the entire point — and is it even a 'documentary' at all, given it tells you almost nothing about Bausch's life?
Its footprint
The dancers performing on, under, and inside Wuppertal's suspended monorail became the film's signature image — instantly recognizable shorthand for 'dance escaping the theater' — and the peat-covered Rite of Spring stage is endlessly screenshotted and referenced in dance culture.
Where it stands
A touchstone of dance-on-film and the arthouse-3D micro-canon, beloved on Letterboxd as a grief film disguised as a dance film — the 'you must see this on the biggest screen possible' entry in Wenders' documentary run.
Did you know? Pina Bausch died suddenly in June 2009, just days before shooting was due to start; Wenders canceled the film entirely, and it was her Tanztheater Wuppertal dancers who persuaded him to make it anyway — as an elegy for her rather than a portrait with her.
Named by the director
- U2 3D (2007) — Wenders repeatedly said that seeing the U2 concert film in 3D at Cannes convinced him the technology had finally matured enough to capture dance — unlocking a project he had discussed with Bausch for some twenty years.