Nazareth Panadero

Pina Bausch created and performed Café Müller for her dance company Tanztheater Wuppertal. The dance was inspired by and based on her childhood memories of watching her father work at his café in Germany during and immediately following World War II. In this silent style featurette, Bausch shows a restaurant after closing, in which the ghosts of the departed customers stumble blindly into walls and onto chairs but fail to find one another.

Inspired by a powerful involuntary mania which took hold of citizens in the city of Strasbourg just over five hundred years ago, this film is a collaboration in isolation with some of the greatest dancers working today.

In many ways, "Kontakthof" could be seen as the sum of Pina Bausch's choreographies: the performance takes place at a single location. The high room is completely empty and open to the public - like a showcase. The other three sides are furnished with long rows of chairs, like in a dance school. Men and women sit next to each other. Little by little they rise and all sorts of encounters ensue, some cautious and tentative, others wild and impetuous. Sometimes there is a single couple on the dance floor, sometimes the full cast of 30 dancers. Bausch created this piece with her ensemble in 1978. "Kontakthof" is one of four choreographies by Pina Bausch that the director Wim Wenders recorded in full for his film "Pina - Tanzt, tanzt, oder wir los sind" ("Pina - Dance, Dance, Otherwise We Are Lost").

Complete recording of Pina Bausch's piece Vollmond (Full Moon) by Wim Wenders.

Chantal Akerman followed famous Choreographer Pina Bausch and her company of dancers, The Tanzteater Wuppertal, for five weeks while they were on tour in Germany, Italy and France. Her objective was to capture Pina Bausch's unparalleled art not only on stage by behind the scenes.