3D cinema revolution takes hold at Berlin Film Festival (Feature)

By Andrew McCathie Feb 13, 2011, 17:39 GMT

Berlin - The Berlin Film Festival rolled out on Sunday a series of new 3D films amid signs that the drive to boost the technology as a cinema-going experience is gaining momentum.

After reemerging in Hollywood blockbusters like Toy Story 3 and Avatar, state-of-the-art 3D movie-making is now looking like it could be a big winner for a range of different films.

The lineup of 3D films screened in Berlin included French animator Michel Ocelot's fairytale movie along with a dance film from German director Wim Wenders and a documentary about what are thought to be the world's oldest cave paintings from Munich-born director Werner Herzog.

Wenders said 3D technology was key to his movie, in which he pays homage to Germany's modern dance legend Pina Bausch, who died at the age of 68 in 2009.

'I think 3D is tailor-made for dance,' the Oscar-nominated director told a press conference marking the world premiere in Berlin of his movie Pina. 'It goes together so well,' he said.

Speaking to reporters following the Berlin debut of his movie Les Contes de la Nuit (Tales of the Night), Ocelot paid tribute to the German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger, who pioneered the technique of silhouette in cinema about a century ago.

In his film, Ocelot brings silhouette animation and 3D technology together.

After seeing a Reiniger film, Ocelot was convinced that he had found his method for making films. 'It was 20 years ago and I've been doing these things since then. So thanks to Lotte!' he said.

Displaying the full magic of film, Les Contes de la Nuit tells the story of a group of friends who use a rundown cinema to act out the characters of old fairy tales.

'Fairy tales are my language, all fairy tales from any part of the planet,' he said. 'I like swimming happily in them.'

Thanks to 3D technology, Herzog's Cave Of Forgotten Dreams takes moviegoers on a remarkable journey through the Chauvet Pont d'Arc cave in southern France. The cave contains over 400 murals, which are believed to be over 30,000 years old.

Only discovered in the last 20 years, the cave consists of several corridors and caverns.

It is not open to the public because of fears about the impact of the human presence on the vast wealth of paintings it holds. Herzog was selected as the filmmaker to show the paintings to the world.

Rather than lying flat on the cave wall, many of the artists incorporated the uneven surfaces of the cave in their works, often marking them out with colour.

Wenders' 3D dance movie with Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal follows his hit Buena Vista Social Club about musical life in Cuba.

Despite several of years of preparation, Wenders had decided to call off the film after Bausch's sudden death last year. But her son and members of the ballet company pressed him to forge ahead with the project.

The result is a carefully crafted collection of some of Bausch's greatest works, including Cafe Mueller, Le Sacre du Printemps, Vollmond and Kontakthof.

The performances are staged at various spaces around Wuppertal - the rather nondescript town in Germany's Ruhr Valley where Bausch's company was based.

Wenders concedes that it would have been a very different film if Bausch had lived.

'Pina was to be the centre figure,' he said, with the film's audience accompanying her to rehearsals as well as on two international tours. 'So the movie would have been a road movie in a way,' he said.

Bausch worked in Wuppertal for more than 35 years, but Wenders said the one thing that he had promised her when they launched the film project was that she would not have to explain her work.

Bausch appears from time to time in Wenders' Pina holding her trademark cigarette.

But for the most part it is members of her company who set out to explain their relationship with the choreographer.

One dancer remembered her asking the company what was it they longed for and what made them yearn for it.

For his part, Wenders said after first being introduced to Bausch's ballets about 25 years ago he believed her work made filmmakers appear to be 'beginners in the art of seeing.'

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