Ole John

The Ballad of the Viking King, Holger the Dane (1996)

This puppet film is a visually rich interpretation of the national hero Holger Danske. The story begins with Holger's birth and baptism in pagan Denmark around the year 800. The little boy is kidnapped by the Franks, who, led by Charlemagne, are trying to ...

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 ...

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 ...

New York Street Performers (1982)

Various street performers in action. ...

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 ...

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. ...

Inside (1971)

A cinematic experiment that moves in several planes. Four people act out a human course, seen with white silhouettes on a black background. 'Inside' them - or behind them - a different process plays out, supported and contradicted by the sound side. ...

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. ...

Love (1970)

An existential pictorial poem about human life. "Can they stand it? Do they never feel? ...

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 ...

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. ...

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 ...

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 ...

ABCinema (2009)

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

Fargo. Slump I film (1969)