Dancing Dreams
Berlinale Special/Generation
Film Festival 2010
Dancing Dreams
A Film by Anne Linsel
2009 - Germany - Documentary - 1.85 DCP - 89 min.
with Teenagers perform „Kontakthof“ by Pina Bausch
Language: German
Produced by Gerd Haag & Anne Linsel
The dance performance „Kontakthof“ bears the unmistakable signature of Pina Bausch: it deals with forms of human contact, the encounters between the sexes, and the search for love and tenderness with all the attendant anxieties, yearnings and doubts. It is about feelings, which pose a big challenge, particularly for young people. For almost a year teenagers from over eleven schools in Wuppertal went on an emotional journey. Every Saturday, 40 students, aged between 14 to 18 years, rehearsed under the direction of the Bausch-dancers Jo-Ann Endicott and Bénédicte Billiet and under the intense supervision of Pina Bausch herself. The film „Dancing Dreams“ by Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann accompanies the rehearsal process culminating in the opening night. We watch the teenagers making their first, still clumsy attempts to transform the subjects of the dance performance into motion and choreography and to develop an own, individual body expression. They discover themselves in a process, which leads great personal growth. Gentle and shy but also aggressive contacts condensate to individual experiences that many of the teenagers encounter for the first time on stage. Pina Bausch has always encouraged the young dancers „to be themselves.“ It is behind their own movements, fears, feelings and desires that their personal „Dancing Dreams“ become visible. At the end each of them has not only grown up, but above all has become more self-confident, independent and more sceptical facing prejudices. Employing an unusual adjacency, the film introduces the young protagonists in sensitive ways, it culminates in drawing a portrait of an entire generation. Pina Bausch died on June 30th, 2009. „Dancing Dreams – teenagers perform „Kontakthof“ by Pina Bausch“ shows the last motion pictures and the last interview with the world-famous dancer and choreographer.
Berlinale Special/Generation
Film Festival 2010
More Films
The Passion of Michelangelo
A film by Esteban Larrain
2013 - Chile/France/Argentina - Drama - DCP - 1.85 - 97 min.
Chile, 1983. The first street protests pose a dangerous threat to Pinochet’s military government. The regime responds through a secret operation in order to divert public opinion. They pick a 14-yearold street child called Miguel Angel, who swears he can see and talk to the Virgin Mary herself, and they turn him into a pop prophet. His tormented face is reproduced in all the media, and in just a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people make a pilgrimage to Peñablanca, the village where he lives, to participate in ceremonies where prophecies, stigmata, levitations and miracles of all kinds are part of the usual routine.
During the period of the hoax, Miguel Angel goes through a deep transformation. From being a fragile and shy kid, he becomes a clever and capricious teenager who uses his
“divine gift” to manipulate his environment to his advantage. When the church investigates and finally resolves to ban the cult of the Virgin of Peñablanca, the government leaves the boy to his fate. Even if he tries hard to keep his seat of honor, Miguel Angel cannot avoid suffering a biblical fall: he is humiliated, abandoned and banished.
Talking about the Weather
A film by Annika Pinske
2022 - Germany - Drama - 2.39:1 - 90 min.
Clara made it: she has got away from her native provincial East Germany, now living a bohemian life in Berlin, teaching philosophy while finishing her Ph. D. Between an affair with one of her students and her testy friendship with her thesis advisor Margot, she barely has time to see her 15-year-old daughter, who mostly lives with her ex. But when Clara visits her mother for a weekend, she finds herself confronted with her ideal of an unfettered, self-determined life. How high is the price she must pay for it?
