REVIEWS Pina REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL
Billed as ‘the world’s first 3D arthouse film’, Wim Wenders’ tribute to the late German choreogra- pher Pina Bausch proves 3D and contemporary dance are made for each other. The stereography looks great, and makes an eloquent and exhilarat- ing case for extending the remit of the 3D feature beyond animation and action blockbusters. Niche artforms rarely attract the kind of fund-
ing that made possible this performance-based documentary, so we should be thankful Wenders had the clout and the determination to push the film through after the death of Bausch in summer 2009, just two days before test shoots were due to begin. That event changed the nature of the film from
a document of working methods to a tribute (the film has the subhead of ‘A film for Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders’). We do get some glimpses of Bausch, in archive
performance footage and interviews which has been given a 3D makeover, but mostly Wenders’ widescreen homage consists of works created by Bausch over the course of a 27-year association with the Tanztheater Wuppertal — some played on stage, and some on the streets and in the parks and functional modernist buildings of this Ger- man industrial city. If it is to find the wide audience it deserves, Pina
will have to follow up on its technical innovations by breaking new distribution and marketing
OUT OF COMPETITION
Ger. 2011. 103mins Director/screenplay Wim Wenders Production companies Neue Road Movies, Eurowide Film Production, ZDF, ZDFtheaterkanal, Arte, 3sat International sales HanWay Films, www.
hanwayfilms.com Producers Wim Wenders, Gian-Piero Ringel Executive producer Jeremy Thomas Cinematography Helene Louvart, Jörg Widmer Stereography Alain Derobe Editor Toni Froschhammer Music Thom Hanreich
BREAKINGNEWS For the latest film business news see
ScreenDaily.com
ground. Circuits which already offer live opera in the cinema are one route, and in certain locations the film may even benefit from the same ‘one-day- event’ model they generally follow. In large urban centres such as London, Paris or New York, there is probably enough of an audience for contemporary dance to give this theatrical residence in one pres- tige venue and treat the product like a West End/ Broadway show. In Germany, where Bausch is a national treasure, its spread is likely to be broader. The film is centred on four of Bausch’s most
celebrated choreographies — ‘Café Müller’, ‘The Rite of Spring’, ‘Vollmond’ and ‘Kontakthof ’ —
Almanya: Welcome To Germany REVIEWED BY FIONNUALA HALLIGAN
A warm-hearted, nostalgia-tinged crowdpleaser and also a manipulative, irresistible tear-jerker, Almanya: Welcome To Germany (Almanya Willkommen In Deutschland) is the Turkish/Ger- man riposte to East Is East’s Pakistani immigrants in the UK. Facing a bright commercial future on its immi-
nent German release, this may fall between two stools in overseas markets, however. Certain to be shunned as commercial by the artier end of the spectrum, smart packaging (including a new title) could still see Almanya draw crossover Kolya-sized audiences for Beta’s buyers.
Situations faced by Alymanya’s immigrant
Turkish family may be specifically German, but at the centre of Yasemin Samdereli’s amenable drama, which she co-wrote with her sister Nesrin Samdereli, is an eloquently expressed appeal for understanding and tolerance which should not fall on deaf ears outside its homeland. Almanya has an appealing freshness to its writ-
ing and performances, which carries the viewer over some of its more self-consciously cute aspects (a lisping six-year-old boy; performers who address younger versions of themselves on screen; an Il Postino-style blue-sky vision of the Eastern Mediterranean and its moustachioed inhabitants). Yet, why not present Turkey to wider audiences
which she herself had selected with Wenders for the film. We see them performed on stage at the Wuppertal theatre, sometimes only for the cam- era, sometimes with a docile and rarely glimpsed live audience. Other dance sequences — generally solo or a deux — take place outdoors, at traffic intersections, on the Wuppertal Suspension Line monorail, in parks, disused factories, on escala- tors and in swimming pools. But Wenders’ film also reminds us of something
which would have come across, to a large extent, in 2D: just how radical and viscerally dramatic Bausch’s choreographies are.
OUT OF COMPETITION
Ger. 2011. 97mins Director Yasemin Samdereli Production company Roxy Film International sales Beta Cinema, www.
betacinema.com Producers Andreas Richter, Annie Brunner, Ursula Woerner Screenplay Yasemin Samdereli, Nesrin Samdereli Cinematography Ngo The Chau Editor Andrea Mertens Main cast Vedat Erincin, Fahri Yardim, Aylin Tezel, Lilay Huser, Demet Gül, Denis Moschitto, Rafael Koussouris, Aykut Kayacik, Aycan Vardar
in a less-threatening manner than its often-forbid- ding domestic cinema? And why not skim over some of the grittier aspects of immigrant life in the West, if the point is still effectively made? Samder- eli’s background in television has led her to make a play for wider audiences, and it remains to be seen whether this gambit will pay off. Set between the present and 45 years previously,
Almanya focuses on Huseyin Yilmaz (Erincin), a ‘gastarbeiter’ in Germany, and his family of four grown-up children, 22-year-old secretly pregnant grand-daughter Canan (Tezel) and cute six-year-old grandson Cenk (Koussouris). At the same time as he finally becomes a German citizen, Huseyin also buys some land in his home village in Antalya, Tur- key, and insists his family all come “home” with him on a road trip. Interspersed with this is the story of how they came to live in Germany in the first place and how they grapple with their heritage now. This certainly is not life on the mean streets of
Hamburg. Huseyin may work building the roads, but we get few glimpses of his sweat and toil. The language confusion is dealt with neatly by Samder- eli, and there are some sweetly funny moments involving an attempt at Christmas and the terror of seeing Christ on a cross. Performances are beguil- ing, from the children/young parents and their older counterparts alike, to the point where, when the Samdereli sisters start to tug energetically on the viewer’s heartstrings, resistance is futile. Technically this is a studio-bound piece, leav-
ened by period newsreel footage, and only comes to life visually on location in Turkey, and even then in a picture postcard, Turkish Delight-box way. Some sequences, including a dream interlude in a passport official’s office, demonstrate Samdereli’s roots in scripting TV comedy.
n 18 Screen International in Berlin February 14, 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52