“Dance, dance…otherwise we are lost!” This is what Pina has said in a film called Pina, which is directed by Wim Wender (2011). This artful and insightful documentary is made with stunning dance sequences in order for choreographer Pina Bausch and her celebrated dance troupe. And this paper would like to explore freedom inside this film. In fact, the film Pina is actually free in three aspects and they are respectively its free stylistic manners, the dances created by Pina incorporating freedom and Pina herself is free. It is hoped that this exploration can help provide some insightful suggestions as for how to better understand this film.
First and foremost, the film Pina is with free stylistic manners when compared with most documentary films in the past. When it comes to the question that what can be considered to be a documentary film, the answer is always that a documentary film usually uses narration, it usually observes the story in a chronological order, and it is usually used for an educational purpose, or some other similar purpose like that. However, the film Pina was an exception. The more detailed case is that this film is not only not constricted in the form of a documentary film, but it also makes it to the utmost. It can be understood in this way that this film doesn’t involve long narration at all and it doesn’t tell a story in the chronological order, which is not the typical as the usual documentary films.
Moreover, the dances created by Pina incorporates freedom in the film Pina. Generally speaking, incorporating elements of nature, Pina’s dances were unique. To put it more specifically, Pina never gives the dancers too many restrictions toward different dancers and she believes that she has to guide those dancers rather than completely order or manage them. As a result, the dancers are somewhat freedom under her guidance. Perhaps it is out of her educational experience that enables her to be more diverse in this aspect. However, those dancers are still able to pass down her spirit and essence and they all bloom their unique vitality even though Pina doesn’t order them to do as she would like them to do.
As a matter of fact, these dancers and the dances are the expansion and continuation of Pina’s life because they can help finish what Pina cannot do on her own. Apart from that, the destinations of dances are as well free because they are released from the stage and it can be in the wilderness, on the street, in a semi-closed room, under the tram and so on. Besides, the props primarily include flowers, stone, water, dirt, table and chair, etc. Based on this, it is not hard to find that the dances can happen anywhere as long as the dancers would like to dance.
Last but not the least, Pina herself is free at the same time. Pina is free herself so that she would like to give total freedom to all the dancers so that they can all develop themselves as they like. But what is a pity to say is that this film closes with a scene where Pina dances alone in the empty theatre and she dies a few days before the start of shooting. There is no doubt that her death created a sense of sombre, yet this film is a perfect to express her in the fullest form.
To sum up, a reasonable conclusion can be drawn that this film is really a free one after considering the below three aspects: its free stylistic manners, the dances created by Pina incorporating freedom and Pina herself is free. It cannot be denied that there are other aspects that can be used to account for the freedom of this film that have not been mentioned in the above, which calls for further discoveries.