Jason Bailey

• Great to see a film about dancing! A relatively unexplored sub-genre of documentary, and Cunningham was welcome for this alone. It adds to a hole that I suppose Wenders' Pina opened.

• On that note, this film should not have been shot in 3d, which added nothing but nausia. We expect the 3d was entirely for the purpose of (a) copying Pina and, relatedly, b) getting funding. But Cunningham's dances are far less spectacular and their presentation here likewise. The 3d only distracts from the movement in all but one Warhol-involved set, especially when edited with 2d archival.

• First half entertaining, second boring. The film progresses at a monotonous pace: one thing happens and then another and then another. No real conflict or tension.

Which is a problem. Because there evidently was plenty of this, but only in reality. The movie, on the other hand, brushes past unconvincingly. No one in the film is given space apart from Cunningham - everyone else speaks to convince the audience how great he is. I wanted to hear from one of his female dancers honestly, in long form, of the darkness of Cunningham. This would help to flesh out his character, give us something to chew on, and organise the film into a narrative. As is, we grew progressively distrusting and disengaged with the Greatest Hits/ Victory Lap tone, before the film ends suddenly with the news that all his dancers left.

• Ultimately we were left unconvinced that Cunningham (the dancer) was all that interesting. Fashionable certainly, he's attached to the right people, and I'm sure it would be great to be dancing as him, but the just-over-half-full prime-time-at-the-festival cinema was an endless circuit of yawns.

• Nevertheless we feel cultured now.

Working with both archive footage and valuable sound recordings, she conjures up the avant-garde artist through recordings of his work, his philosophy of his art and comments by many close collaborators including notably John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. Not meant as a biopic, film concentrates on spectacularlhy cinematic (in 3-D) new performances of many of his dances, executed by members of his company, which disbanded in 2011, after Merce's death in 2009. At a q&a following the screening, Kovgan indicated that Wim Wenders' innovative 2011 3-D dance film about German choreographer Pina Bausch inspired her to take on this formidable project, finally starting shooting in Stuttgart in 2015 with principal photography taking place in 2018. Her use of 3-D technique is outstanding, resulting in gripping visual images, enhanced by the accompaniment of the original dance scores by John Cage and others. For a novice like me, not overly familiar with Merce's achievements, the movie brings his dance to life and points to how 3-D technology can be used artfully rather than as a gimmick, or its current excuse to permit higher price points for movie admissions to films, both animated and action-oriented, that should play just as well if not better in 2-D on large screens.