An encounter between two of the most remarkable women artists of the 20th century, ONE DAY PINA ASKED... is Chantal Akerman's look at the work of choreographer Pina Bausch and her Wuppertal, Germany-based dance company. "This film is more than a documentary on Pina Bausch," a narrator announces at the outset, "it is a journey through her world, through her unwavering quest for love."
Capturing the company's rehearsals and performances over a five-week European tour, Akerman takes us inside their process. She interviews members of the company, who Bausch chose not only for their talents, but for certain intangible personal qualities as well. The dancers describe the development of various dances, and the way that Bausch calls upon them to supply autobiographical details around which the performances were frequently built.
"Akerman's film is a work of modestly daring wonder, of exploration and inspiration. With her audacious compositions, decisive cuts, and tightrope-tremulous sense of time-and her stark simplicity-it shares the immediate exhilaration of the moment of creation. Akerman's film is of a piece with Bausch's dances."—Richard Brody, The New Yorker
Up Next in Germany
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System Error
Directed by Florian Opitz • Documentary • 2017 • 96 minutes
SYSTEM ERROR takes us from to the roots of the expectation of unlimited growth, particularly in the post-World War II years, to the financial crash of 2008 and beyond. Does the subsequent decade of simultaneous inequality, austerity, an...
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Do Communists Have Better Sex?
Directed by André Meier • Documentary • 2006 • 52 minutes
This is about sex. About sex in Germany and who, on which side of the Iron Curtain, was better at it. At the end of the Second World War, Germans shared the same culture, lifestyle, morals. But four decades later, everything had changed. ...
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Germans & Jews
Directed by Janina Quint & Tal Recanti • Documentary • With Dr. Fritz Stern, Deidre Berger, Rafael Seligman, Rebecca Gop, Dr. Sergey Lagodinsky, Arik Hayut • 2016 • 76 minutes
Today, Europe’s fastest growing Jewish population is in Berlin. Germany is considered one of the most democratic societi...
