Arts

“Pina” brings new audience to the Coral Gables Art Cinema

If you haven’t seen “Pina,” the Oscar-nominated documentary film by German filmmaker Wim Wenders about famed choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch, then go. It’s running for another week at the Coral Gables Art Cinema, and I suspect the tickets will go fast.

“Film is one of the most popularly accessible art forms,” says Robert Rosenberg, director of the Coral Gables Art Cinema, “straddling the divide between pure entertainment and high art. It’s a mass medium that can reach people across the globe, and one that keeps evolving, as in Wim Wenders new use of 3-D in Pina.”

Rosenberg is right. Wenders’ use of 3-D-technology in “Pina” bridges the divide between pure entertainment and high art. It also blurs the virtual line between audience and the dancers. When the film began, I was transported on stage and looked them in the eye. Even with her eyes closed, Bausch could sense her dancers and she knew how to unhinge them from the invisible shackles that held their body language back.

She encouraged them to embrace the beauty of crazy, to scare her and to gut the shy inside. In “Le Sacre Du Printemps,” fear, anguish, ecstasy, joy, terror, confusion and disassociation were experienced in ways I have never experienced before during a live performance. The clarity of the dancer’s facial expressions became another performance, which was terrifyingly organic and animistic. 3-D made this possible. Bausch made it memorable.

“I think we are witnessing the very beginning of the use of 3-D technology by ‘art house’ directors,” says Rosenberg. “It is only really the second widely released 3-D film of this type, the other, coincidentally, being “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” from another famous German director, Werner Herzog.”

Before the film began, Rosenberg called Wenders on Skype and he graciously spoke to the audience for about 20 minutes. He spoke about the importance of Pina’s work, the evolution of the film and his personal relationship with her. Wenders asked a question: “How many of you have never heard of Pina Bausch before tonight?” A majority of hands went up.

Earlier, Rosenberg asked the audience another telling question: “Raise your hand if this is your first time here?” Most hands went up in the sold-out theater, including the giant cluster of 20-somethings surrounding me who were clearly out on date night.

I wondered what made “Pina” an appealing date film. Perhaps it was the novelty of 3-D that drove them to see an art film on a Friday night. Maybe the free cocktails and food had something to do with it. “Getting the word out to as many people as possible is still a challenge,” Rosenberg says. “Especially when we have some of lesser known but still very interesting films!” But the real challenge may be getting the ‘regular’ movie-goer to see a static, one-dimensional multiplex blockbuster film again.

In a few weeks, the Coral Gables Art Cinema will be a venue for the Miami Film Festival from March 2 through March 9, featuring the best and most diverse American independent and foreign films Rosenberg can find. Getting people out to the festival shouldn’t be a problem. If it is, here’s the link to the lineup of films. In addition, on March 16, the Oscar-nominated feature animation “Chico & Rita,” which is set in 1950s Havana, opens with music by Latin jazz greats. “Best of all, the Oscar-winning Spanish director of the film, Fernando Trueba, will be joining us in person,” Rosenberg says. “No virtual Skype on this one for opening night.”

For information on showings and new releases, visit http://www.gablescinema.com/.