Picture of Alain

23.2.1936 – 12.3.2012

When Alain Derobe passed away this spring, European cinema lost a great visionary and its 3D pioneer. Alain had worked with the new medium since the Nineties, had done groundbreaking research and had developed a whole series of prototype equipment. All his 3D-rigs were handmade, also the ones we shot PINA with. Frankly, we could have never done this film without him. 3D was still in its infancy, and most people were scared of the new technology. But not Alain. He was ready and encouraged me to go for it. So we made his first feature-length 3D-film together. He mastered it brilliantly. After all, he had rehearsed for it long enough. Alain was a constant source of inspiration, and full of technical, physiological, artistic and emotional insight into the new cinematographic language. We made another short film afterwards and had many plans for the future, when he left us all of a sudden. This is a terrible and painful loss, not only for the 3D community. We will try to pay homage to the great Alain Derobe in the framework of the BEYOND Symposium, showing interviews of his, photographs and the making-of of PINA, in 3D of course.

Curriculum Vitae

Wim Wenders was born in Düsseldorf in 1945. After two years of studying medicine and philosophy and a yearlong stay in Paris as a painter he attended the University of Television and Film in Munich from 1967 to 1970. One of the most important figures to emerge from the “New German Cinema” period in the 1970s, he was a founding member of the German film distribution “Filmverlag der Autoren” in 1971 and he established his own production company “Road Movies” in Berlin in 1975. Alongside directing atmospheric auteur films Wenders works with the medium of photography, and his poignant images of desolate landscapes engage themes including memory, time and movement. A major survey of his photography, “Pictures from the surface of the Earth”, was exhibited in museums and art institutions worldwide. Wim Wenders has published numerous books with essays and photographs. Wim Wenders became a member of the Academy of Arts Berlin in 1984. He was awarded honorary doctorates at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1989), the Theological Faculty of the University of Fribourg (1995), the University of Louvain (2005) and the Architectural Faculty of the University of Catania (2010). He is founding member and president of the European Film Academy and member of the order Pour le Mérite. Currently he is teaching film as a professor at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg.