Jørgen Leth

Music for Black Pigeons (2023)

Music for Black Pigeons is the first collaboration between Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed. The film poses existential questions to influential jazz players such as Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz, Midori Takada and many others: How does it feel to play, and wha ...

I Walk (2020)

Documentary about Danish filmmaker, sports journalist and poet Jørgen Leth who struggles after surviving a major earthquake in Haiti. ...

The Perfect Human (2018)

Refilmed scene by scene of the short film "The Perfect Human" (1967), by Jorgen Leth, to resignify from the recognition of diversity and the multiple intertwinings with the body, affective-sexuality and mental health. ...

Pelota II (2017)

The mysteries of the balls in Basque Pelota: each ball is a unique creation with which the players have a special relationship. ...

I Am Talking To You (2013)

A documentary about the Danish artist John Kørner. ...

The Erotic Man (2010)

The film has been ten years in the making, and over time it has grown to become what the director himself has called an artistic testament. It is simultaneously his most personal and most provocative film. A film about growing older, about losing, about th ...

Ra-ra (2008)

A portrayal of a Haitian Rara festival in action. ...

Tropical Mix (2007)

A short sequence through the tropics. ...

Aarhus (2005)

A documentary short about the director's home town of Aarhus, Denmark. ...

The Five Obstructions (2003)

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made ...

New Scenes from America (2003)

A look at post-9/11 America by the Danish documentarian. ...

Dreamers (2002)

During a period of 20 years Jørgen Leth portrays Haitian painters and their wonderful native artform. They are dreamers, mystics, fantasts and storytellers. Haiti is a country in which a strong sense of historical destiny confronts the human condition, an ...

I Am Alive (1999)

With films like Det perfekte menneske and Det gode og det onde in mind the consistent black and white portrait film Jeg er levende gives the impression that Søren Ulrik Thomsen has been invited into Leth's filmic universe, which conversely allows room for ...

Haiti. Untitled (1996)

Writer and cineast Jørgen Leth is the fascinated observer of a country where reality often seems surreal and resembles fiction. Haïti's history is written in blood. Voodoo plays an important role in politics. Death and horror are part of Haïti's everyda ...

Katherine Dunham - Dancing with Life (1994)

Not surprisingly, Jørgen Leth became fascinated by Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), an African-American anthropologist, dancer and choreographer living in Haiti. Dunham was politically engaged and a powerful personality. Unfortunately, at the time it proved ...

Michael Laudrup: A Football Player (1993)

A stil-life of marvellous Danish footballer Michael Laudrups performance on the Barcelona dreamteam 1989-94. ...

Traberg (1992)

Traberg, like Udenrigskorrespondenten, is an experiment in fiction consisting of placing a character or a fictional sketch into a set of surroundings and seeing what happens. Moreover, for most of the film the surroundings are the same, namely the chaotic ...

Notes on Love (1989)

Poet-filmmaker Jørgen Leth taps his own earliest inspirational veins by free-floating through a camera/microscope-enhanced set of poems with love as their first and final subject. For example, how a tropical island woman prepares for a meeting with her lo ...

Danish Literature (1989)

Jørgen Leth's personal, pleasurable distillation of Danish literature covers seven poets alive at the time of production and twenty classical poets. A handful of actors share readings of the classical texts in semi close ups against a dark background; the ...

Notebook from China (1987)

In 1984 Jørgen Leth, cinematographer Dan Holmberg and sound recordist Niels Torp travelled some 6,000 kilometres by train through China. The result is a very calm, beautifully perceived travelogue borne by unprejudiced curiosity and observational ability. ...

Composer Meets Quartet (1987)

An insight into the work by composer and pianist Herman D. Koppel with the American Cantilena Quartet before the first performance of his piano quartet 'opus 114' in 1986. ...

Moments of Play (1986)

A personal essay on the play of children and grown-ups all over the world. The director has shot the film in different countries and cultures: Bali, Brazil, China, Denmark, UK, Haiti, Spain and the USA. ...

Pelota (1983)

A documentary view of the Basque ball-game in which a small hard leather ball is hit against a wall. The film gives an impression of the game itself and of those who play it, not only the star performers (and the myths that surround them), but also those w ...

Interference (1983)

Udenrigskorrespondenten was Leth's first feature but must be regarded as an experiment in fiction rather than an action film in the usual sense. Alex Hansen (Henning Jensen) is a peripatetic correspondent and at the start of the film on an assignment in ci ...

66 Scenes from America (1982)

As a visual narrative it is reminiscent of a pile of postcards from a journey, which indeed is what the film is. It consists of a series of lengthy shots of a tableau nature, each appearing to be a more or less random cross section of American reality, but ...

Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger (1982)

New York Street Performers (1982)

Various street performers in action. ...

Step on Silence (1981)

Step on Silence was made from raw material from Peter Martins - en danser but unlike the traditional way the Martins film communicates its material in this case we have a film that with its slightly dusty, scratchy appearance makes room for all the shots o ...

Kalule (1979)

Portraying Ayub Kalule, the boxer from Uganda who was "the most famous immigrant in Denmark" in the late 1970s. ...

Dancing Bournonville (1979)

At danse Bournonville is a portrait of the Bournonville tradition at the Royal Danish ballet that has survived for 150 years on the basis of a few notes and the memories of the dancers and is the basis of the special nature and global reputation the compan ...

A Midsummer Night's Play (1979)

Leth's television production of Sanct Hansaften-Spil by the Danish playwright Adam Oehlenshläger is an attempt to take the poetic play at face value and bring it to life in a series of tableaux with settings by Per Kirkeby and acted by a large number of c ...

Peter Martins: A Dancer (1978)

A late 1970s look at Danish ballet star Peter Martins's art and an assessment of what makes him unique and highly lauded on the international stage of ballet. ...

A Sunday in Hell (1977)

A chronology of the 1976 Paris-Roubaix bicycle race from the perspective of participants, organizers and spectators. ...

Good and Evil (1975)

Jørgen Leth can squeeze poetry from a stone and wit from dust, and he can find love where the milk of human kindness runs dry. In a series of tableaux of Life in Denmark, he carries absurdism to a happy extreme. To act out his minuscule non-dramas, he use ...

Stars and the Water Carriers (1974)

The images from the Tour de France in the television production Eddy Merckx in the Vincinity of a Cup of Coffee may be seen as a small sketch for the fully unfurled epic cycling drama Stars and Watercarriers. The film follows the 1973 Giro d'Italia and in ...

The Impossible Hour (1974)

The Impossible Hour is a concentrated study of Ole Ritter's attempt in Mexico City in 1974 to set a new record for the hour - described in the film as "the noblest, most difficult record that can be set on a bicycle". A brief retrospective in black and whi ...

Klaus Rifbjerg (1974)

Klaus Rifbjerg is a portrait that has the author talking about his work in a series of tableaux. ...

Eddy Merckx in the Vicinity of a Cup of Coffee (1973)

With a slow introductory zoom onto Leth in a TV studio and a corresponding zoom out at the end Eddy Merckx in the Vicinity of a Cup of Coffee may be structured in the classical style but an extremely unusual TV production is involved: in the studio Leth re ...

Chinese Ping-Pong (1972)

An experimental sports film made partly during the Scandinavian Open Championships in Halmstad in 1970, partly during the Chinese players' exhibition tour in Denmark immediately after the SOC. First of all, it is a film about their style, about the artisti ...

Life in Denmark (1972)

The intention of the film is to give an impression of what small exotic Denmark looks like, what the strange Danes look like and how they are. Nearly 100 Danes are presented in the film, amongst them a racing cyclist, a Minister of Finance, a popular actor ...

The Search (1970)

The Search is the ultimate happening film created by a group of ABCinema members during a camp on the Juttish heath. The film consists of loosely composed sequences. The landscape is the setting for a series of peculiar occurrences in which individual memb ...

Motion Picture (1970)

The film may be viewed as a study of the nature of the medium and more specifically of the phenomena of framing, movement, and synchronicity of sound and picture. ...

The Deer Garden: The Romantic Forest (1970)

Portraying the four seasons of the nature in the famous Danish garden Dyrehaven. ...

Frændeløs (1970)

Anthology of six experimental films. 1) Allan de Waal: Investigation of an abandoned hippie house. 2) Bjørn Nørgaard and Lene Adler Petersen: The female Christ. Five subsections. a) The female Christ crucified by Roskilde Fjord. b) The female Christ on t ...

Monument (1969)

The film, which can be seen as a preliminary study for Motion Picture, is 16 mm black / white footage of Torben Ulrich during exercise in HIKs tennis club in 1969. It wound back and forth during filming, made double exposures and filmed at various speeds. ...

Krag-filmen (1969)

The ABCinema group dispatched Jørgen Leth to make the arrangements with Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag, who good-naturedly put himself at their disposal. Relaxing on a bench in the garden of Copenhagen's Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Krag is scrutinised by c ...

Rødovrefilmen (1969)

Artist group ABCinema's footage from Rødovrecentret, Denmark's first large shopping center in Rødovre, a suburb of Copenhagen. A collage of super 8 footage, shot with multiple cameras. ...

Ophelia's Flowers (1968)

Jørgen Leth's experimental take on Ophelia's madness scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet. ...

The Perfect Human (1968)

An elegant and humorous film—in the guise of a serious anthropological treatise—spotlights "The Perfect Human," a model of the modern Dane created by our wishful thinking. ...

Near Heaven, Near Earth (1968)

Short film about hippie life in Nepal. ...

Look Forward to a Time of Security (1964)

A study of the basic elements of film, first and foremost framing and the relationship between image and sound. The film consists of shots of a Spanish barber at work, a man telling stories, and the musician Louis Hjulmand playing the vibraphone. ...

Stop for Bud (1963)

Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through ...

Corona Film Club (2021)

Documentary about filmmaker and film lover Stig Björkman during the pandemic year of 2020 when he stay in touch with his friends over his laptop. ...

I Walk (2020)

Documentary about Danish filmmaker, sports journalist and poet Jørgen Leth who struggles after surviving a major earthquake in Haiti. ...

Gifts of Chance – a film about Jørgen Leth (2020)

Jørgen Leth looks back at more than 50 years as a filmmaker in a cheerful film, whose contagious enthusiasm initiates us in his special poetry. ...

Jørgen Leth & Co.: Vi Sidder Bare Her (2018)

Født til Filmen (2015)

What are the consequences of a young person to be famous at an early age, being a public person? "Født til Filmen" is about the Danish actress Stine Bierlich's (1967 - 2007) life and career. Through interviews with herself, with her family - Ann Bierlich ...

Laamb (2013)

The rules are simple in Senegalese wrestling: First man down, loses. The sport derives from ritual manhood trials and has developed into a national sport with packed stadiums and huge prizes. Today, the fight is supplemented with bare knuckle boxing but wi ...

Klown (2010)

Frank is left with the responsibility for his nephew Bo on an already planned canoe trip. Frank's mate Casper is also coming along. Weighed down a with their obligation, Frank and Casper nevertheless look forward to ending the trip at Skanderborg Festival ...

The Erotic Man (2010)

The film has been ten years in the making, and over time it has grown to become what the director himself has called an artistic testament. It is simultaneously his most personal and most provocative film. A film about growing older, about losing, about th ...

Komeda: A Soundtrack for a Life (2010)

Krzysztof Komeda was a jazz pianist and film composer. With compositions like the lullaby for Rosemary's Baby (1968) by Roman Polanski, Komeda succeeded in writing his own chapter in the history of soundtracks. This documentary follows the life story of th ...

ABCinema (2009)

A documentary and series of interviews about the ABCinema movement/production group. ...

Sanselighedens pris (2007)

When the media storm flared up in the wake of Jørgen Leth's memoir "The Imperfect Man" in 2005, it was mainly due to the passage about Leth's erotic relationship with the chef's young daughter. While the storm was still raging, friend and journalist Jørg ...

Freedom of Space: Skateboard Culture and the Public Space (2006)

A documentary about the interaction of skateboarding and public space. Shot in 2006 on 16mm Film and Mini-DV as part of the Fuel TV experiment. ...

Aarhus (2005)

A documentary short about the director's home town of Aarhus, Denmark. ...

The Five Obstructions (2003)

In 1967, experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth created a striking short film, The Perfect Human, starring a man and women sitting in a box while a narrator poses questions about their relationship and humanity. Years later, Danish director Lars von Trier made ...

66 Scenes from America (1982)

As a visual narrative it is reminiscent of a pile of postcards from a journey, which indeed is what the film is. It consists of a series of lengthy shots of a tableau nature, each appearing to be a more or less random cross section of American reality, but ...

Good and Evil (1975)

Jørgen Leth can squeeze poetry from a stone and wit from dust, and he can find love where the milk of human kindness runs dry. In a series of tableaux of Life in Denmark, he carries absurdism to a happy extreme. To act out his minuscule non-dramas, he use ...

The Perfect Human (1968)

An elegant and humorous film—in the guise of a serious anthropological treatise—spotlights "The Perfect Human," a model of the modern Dane created by our wishful thinking. ...