STEREOSKOP
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For her unique style, fusioning dance with theatre, she was and is one of the few prominent dancers and choreographers of modern time. Pina Bausch was born in 1940 in Solingen. According to her biography, we can feel echoes of her childhood in the atmosphere of her pieces. Helping out in her parent’s restaurant, she learned to observe people and bit by bit how to turn everyday life into a form of performance. She was able to translate life and its most tiny gestures into performative expression in theatre. “The secret of this success may lie in the fact that Pina Bausch's dance theatre dares to take an unflinching look at reality, yet at the same time invites us to dream. It takes the spectators' everyday lives seriously, while also nurturing their hopes that everything can change for the better.”
She received many offers to make a film about her and through her, she chose Wim Wennders who, at that time, wasn’t ready…
2025
When it comes to translating vision and emotions to represent another person’s universe, it’s often not easy. No matter how much experience there is in the field, it can still be challenging and take time. The elements that allow to bring what’s inside to the outside? Experience helps, yes, and confidence can do a lot, yes. However, the connection felt for certain projects can be both an obstacle and a driving force at the same time; the Eureka moment must be found to dispel any doubt.
Pina found her unique way of creation and representation more clearly by making her dancers participate not only with their body expression but their mind, by asking them associative questions around the play in order to embody from the inside to the outside the characters in the well-known piece of theatre Macbeth.
Pina Bausch: Mc Beth, © Uwe Stratmann/Uwe Stratmann
After this radical representation of this famous play, she started to receive attention from the cinema. Director Wim Wenders became a friend and seemed to fit Pina’s expectations of making a very personal film about her and her vision. Which is why she waited until Wim was ready.
A master in timing. And mastering time, as a conceptual aspect of film per se, Wim Wenders audience, whether they were critics, fans, even accidental visitors of his world will have a slight idea of what it is to wait for Wim. Most of them will agree that it is worth it. Some of them even after watching the almost 5 hour long directors cut of ‘Until the end of the world. He says it’s all he is living for.
Shortly after they met Wim & Pina agreed on their joint project. 20 years and he said that during all this time, seeing her work, he admitted over and over again to her that he didn’t know how to translate her stage language into film. Yet. Just not yet. Over the years, Pina kept calling him, and every time he replied, “I’m not ready.” Patiently, she just always said “Ok” and turned down all the other offers from different directors that piled up with her internationally ever increasing popularity.
Then on the 20th of May in 2007, at midnight, Wim Wenders went to see a debut screening at Cannes Film Festival. The film was U2 3D. Wim finally found the answer to a at this point 20-year old project.
Pina Bausch - Pina 3D
U2 3D was one of the first (or arguably the first) live-action concert films shot entirely in native digital 3D. The rigs used: Twin-camera systems, to emulate left-eye and right-eye, built into stereo 3D rigs, each rig weighing 90-140 kg and containing two high definition cameras spaced a human-eye distance apart (for stereoscopic effect). One of the major “firsts” for this film was the use of zoom lenses in 3D stereo rigs. Typically 3D stereo rigs had to use fixed primes because zooming introduced many alignment/telecentricity issues. This film used Zeiss digital zoom lenses - via 3ality / Zeiss - so that zooming in stereo 3D became feasible. 3ality Digital, led by Steve Schklair, was the company that developed, engineered, and operated the 3D rigs used for U2 3D.
Wim Wenders later turned to the same company when he decided to shoot Pina in 3D, after being deeply inspired by what had been achieved on U2 3D.
“I was ready to abandon the project. Then I saw what was possible with U2 3D — suddenly I understood: with 3D, I could bring dance to life.”
— Wim Wenders, interview in Sight & Sound, 2011.
U2 3D proved that stereoscopic 3D could be used not as a gimmick, but as an expressive, immersive cinematic language.
Originally Pina Bausch & Wim Wenders planned to begin shooting Pina 3D film with and about Pina Bausch in September 2009, and initial test shots had already been made then.
However time turned into a sacrifice, because of Pina Bausch's unexpected death on 30 June 2009, 5 days after her cancer diagnosis.
Wenders decided to continue the project. Without her, but for her and the help with of the ensemble. ‘Pina 3D’ premiered the film on 13 February 2011, out of competition, at the 2011 Berlinale.
Pina Bausch Foundation (no date) Talking about People through Dance – Pina Bausch Biography. Available at: https://www.pinabausch.org/post/biography (Accessed: 31 October 2025).
Schmöe, S. (2019) ‘Pina Bausch’s „Macbeth“ im Wuppertaler Opernhaus’, Wuppertaler Rundschau, 23 May. Available at: https://www.wuppertaler-rundschau.de/kultur/pina-bauschs-macbeth-im-wuppertaler-opernhaus_aid-38954951 (Accessed: 31 October 2025).
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (undated) ‘Pina. 2011. Directed by Wim Wenders’, MoMA – What’s On Events Calendar. Available at: https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/8843 (Accessed: 31 October 2025).
Gamba, P. (2012) ‘El documental de Wim Wenders PINA BAUSCH al aire libre’, Ideas de Babel, 3 April. https://ideasdebabel.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/el-documental-de-wim-wenders-pina-bausch-al-aire-libre-por-pablo-gamba/ (Accessed: 31 October 2025).