13659CUNNINGHAM banner

CUNNINGHAM (3D)

Year 2019
Runtime 93 mins
Language English
Alberta Premiere

Celebrating the centennial of the famed choreographer Merce Cunningham’s birth, this stunning 3D film blends biography with beautiful re-staging of his dances.

Over the span of his seven-decade career, the distinguished American artist Merce Cunningham created 180 repertory dances and more than 700 events that combined intense physicality with intellectual rigor. Focused on Cunningham’s early years starting out as a struggling dancer in post-war New York, director Alla Kovgan poetically traces his evolution as one of the most visionary and preeminent choreographers in the world. Collaborating for many years with his life partner, experimental composer John Cage, their risk-taking creativity pushed forward contemporary dance, music, art and film while influencing an entire generation that followed in their footsteps. On the centennial of his birth, this magnificent 3D film re-stages some of his most iconic work, blending it with archival footage of Cunningham, Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and more. Not since Wim Wenders groundbreaking PINA (2011) has a film celebrated an art form and one of its seminal creators with a work that must be seen on the big screen to be truly appreciated.

Director
Alla Kovgan
Producer
Helge Albers, Ilann Girard, Elizabeth Delude-Dix, Derrick Tseng, Kelly Gilpatrick
Screenwriter
Alla Kovgan
Cinematographer
Mko Malkhasyan
Music
Hauschka