Still Pina

How do you pay tribute to an artist who has been pivotal to you? How do you honor the uniqueness of a language and vision developed over the years without betraying or diminishing that uniqueness? Evocation is Claudie Lévesque's chosen approach for Still Pina. Indeed, cinema can reveal itself as a marvelous time-traveling machine.

Like many of us, Claudie remembers the unforgettable Pina Bausch and her Tanztheater Wuppertal troupe filmed by Chantal Akerman, who attentively captured the choreographer's work in One Day Pina Asked (1983). Thirty-five years later, the memory continues to infiltrate the mind and imagination of the Montreal filmmaker. Thus, a film is born, shot in dazzling light on Super 8 film, whose photosensitivity endows it with a powerful photographic aura combined with melancholy in just a few frames.

Still Pina tells the story of an encounter between three artists, three women, made possible only by this moving short film. It conveys an impression of intuitive spontaneity, as only the present sometimes demands. Past and present intertwine to translate the emotion of the filmmaker, fascinated by the eloquent fluidity of the gestures of the sign language interpreter. We discover how a body in motion becomes the messenger of unforgettable images and sounds.

Nicole Gingras
Author, curator and programmer