One Day Pina Asked...
Germany • 57m
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
-
Rabbit a la Berlin
Directed by Bartek Konopka & Piotr Roslowski • Documentary • 2009 • 39 minutes
RABBIT A LA BERLIN is the 2010 Academy Award-nominated story of thousands of wild rabbits which lived in the Death Zone of the Berlin Wall. This is the first film showing the story of the Wall and the reunificatio...
-
Silentium
Directed by Swobodnik, Sobo • Documentary • 2018 • 84 minutes
Four nuns, a formation director, twenty-six sheep and a convent. Seemingly far away from civilization at the edge of the Swabian Alps, the rules of St. Benedict are strictly observed here by the "Benedictine nuns of Our Dear Lady" as ...
-
Stefan Zweig
Directed by Maria Schrader • Drama • With Josef Hader, Barbara Sukowa, Tómas Lemarquis, Cristina do Rego • 2016 • 106 minutes
This emotionally powerful film explores the painful dilemma of whether to speak out or remain silent in the face of tyranny. Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe tells the st...
