mdblist.com logo The Best Jørgen Leth Directed Movies


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poster
MUBI
76
7.4
/9618/
70
/163/
69
/165/
3.7
/13964/
88
/60/
84
/366/
79
/22/

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 a deal with Leth to remake his film five times, each under a different set of circumstances and with von Trier's strictly prescribed rules. As Leth completes each challenge, von Trier creates increasingly further elaborate stipulations.
poster
70
55
7.2
/2673/
66
/48/
65
/52/
3.6
/3587/
76
/175/

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.
poster
74
23
7.7
/1022/
75
/19/
68
/8/
3.8
/1072/

A Sunday in Hell (1977)
A chronology of the 1976 Paris-Roubaix bicycle race from the perspective of participants, organizers and spectators.
poster
42
15
4.2
/465/
60
/31/
48
/23/
20

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 the special moments one remembers, and about the director's own circling around the essence of eroticism.
poster
63
14
7.1
/287/
57
/12/
56
/12/
3.5
/716/

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 which in total invoke a highly emblematic picture of the USA.
poster
Kanopy
67
11
7.3
/214/
55
/5/
68
/6/
3.6
/588/

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 what does it mean to listen? What is it like to be a human being and spending your whole life trying to express something through sounds? The characters wake up, rehearse, record, perform and talk about music. In some moments they are on the edge, the edge of existence, constantly challenging themselves. They listen. They devote themselves to finding a space to create a connection to something bigger than themselves. Something that will outlast all of us.
poster
?
10
/1/

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 impossible to raise the money to produce a film portrait. This pilot has survived on a battered VHS cassette. Footage from a dance seminar in East St. Louis is complemented with interviews with Dunham and other black dancers. The producer Terry Carter is working on having the planned Dunham film accomplished.
poster
?
7.1
/23/
25
/2/
50
/1/

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 reads from his poetry while a subtitle - like in Life in Denmark - pedantically but ambiguously presents observations and describes what is going on.
poster
?
5.5
/18/
10
/1/
40
/4/

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.
poster
?
5.7
/42/
40
/2/
50
/2/

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.
poster
?
5.5
/34/
36
/3/
50
/4/

Ophelia's Flowers (1968)
Jørgen Leth's experimental take on Ophelia's madness scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet.
poster
?
7.4
/9/
40
/1/

Kalule (1979)
Portraying Ayub Kalule, the boxer from Uganda who was "the most famous immigrant in Denmark" in the late 1970s.
poster
?
5.1
/21/
10
/1/
42
/4/

Near Heaven, Near Earth (1968)
Short film about hippie life in Nepal.
poster
?
10
/1/

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. (DFI)
poster
?
5.7
/12/
10
/1/
50
/5/

Klaus Rifbjerg (1974)
Klaus Rifbjerg is a portrait that has the author talking about his work in a series of tableaux.
poster
?
7.3
/44/
100
/1/
70
/2/

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, and where spiritual forces play an active part in everyday life.
poster
?
10
/1/

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 camera-wielding collective members almost like a model in a life-drawing class. Every possible angle, distance and framing is tried. The result is an image of the prime minister that is both fragmented and multi-facetted, describing his visual appearance as a man and an icon. At the same time, the ABCinema members film each other filming Krag, which gives the film a highly self-reflective character. Like "The Deer Garden," this is a film about a film being filmed. A showdown with the documentary portrait genre, "Jens Otto Krag" is devised according to the principle of keeping the material alive by not editing it but randomly piecing it together. (DFI)
poster
?
10
/1/

Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger (1982)
N/A
poster
?
6.8
/33/
52
/4/

Aarhus (2005)
A documentary short about the director's home town of Aarhus, Denmark.
poster
?
20
/1/

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 the poet's words. Thomsen gives an account of brief memories of childhood in a deliberately "staged" fashion, but more particularly of his experience of writing and on the art of reading aloud, and likewise describing poetry in general as a balance between emotion and cognition.
poster
?
5.1
/13/
10
/1/
43
/3/

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 living poets read their own works.
poster
60
?
6.7
/173/
55
/2/
60
/3/

Michael Laudrup: A Football Player (1993)
A stil-life of marvellous Danish footballer Michael Laudrups performance on the Barcelona dreamteam 1989-94.
poster
?
6.6
/36/
10
/1/
30
/2/

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 reality of Haiti. Ebbe Traberg plays Traberg, a mystical character who cannot be explained psychologically and whose seemingly covert activities care only hinted at in pictures.
poster
?
6.8
/33/
10
/1/
60
/2/

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 originally discarded for technical or narrative reasons.
poster
?
7.7
/10/
70
/1/

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.
poster
?
7.1
/20/
30
/1/
50
/1/

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 company enjoys. The film was created in continuation of, and drawing on, Leth and Holmberg's experience in making Peter Martins - en danser.
poster
?
5.5
/8/
10
/1/
45
/2/

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.
poster
?
4.9
/9/
15
/2/
50
/3/

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 members were free to realize personal ideas, fantasies and themes: a man runs across the heath, shouting, a Molotov cocktail flares on a beach, a man repeatedly falls over, an angel-like woman makes a solitary procession, a burning pine, a man breaking a tree with a shovel, etc.
poster
68
?
7.5
/243/
63
/6/
65
/4/

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 his commentary Leth explains the fascination exerted by the great cycle races: "The most beautiful, most pathetic images cycling can give us involve extreme performances in classic terrain."
poster
?
6.0
/30/
10
/1/
58
/5/

The Deer Garden: The Romantic Forest (1970)
Portraying the four seasons of the nature in the famous Danish garden Dyrehaven.
poster
?
7.4
/14/

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.
poster
?
5.5
/20/
10
/1/
60
/1/

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 the Stock Exchange. c) The female Christ exposes herself in front of a cross in a backyard in Nørrebro. d) Female body with breasts and shot bare on a lawn. e) Exhibition of Bjørn Nørgaard's "fucking machines". The female Christ is hung naked in it and eventually has intercourse with Nørgaard. 3) Per Kirkeby: The primitive life in the forest. 4) Jørgen Leth: Interview with a hippie girl. 5) Vagn Lundbye: Paraphrase of spaghetti western. 6) Peter Louis-Jensen: Revolver section of picture and sound noise.
poster
?
7.2
/78/
45
/2/
60
/3/

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 white sets the historical framework, with shots of Ritter and Eddy Merckx' successful record attempts in 1968 and 1972 respectively, and a few words about former record holders such as Fausto Coppi.The film follows Ritter's three record attempts chronologically, which, accompanied by a Mexican marching band on the bandstand, all fail.
poster
?
6.6
/27/
10
/1/
80
/2/

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.
poster
?
7.2
/48/
10
/1/
70
/1/

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 who just play in the streets and alleyways. The film sees the game it its cultural context and conveys the emotions and stories that are peculiar to the Basque country.
poster
59
?
6.9
/101/
60
/1/
48
/6/

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 uses a motley crew of professional actors like Ghita Nørby and Claus Nissen, writer Dan Turéll plus a snake charmer, a bicycle racer and a circus queen.
poster
?
6.4
/46/
10
/1/
45
/4/

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 lover. The film was shot partly in the South Pacific with more than a nod to social anthropoliogist B. Malinowski's historical work The Sexual Life of Savages.
poster
?
7.0
/94/
100
/1/
80
/2/

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 and 13 unmarried women from a provincial town. "There is too much fogginess and rain and melancholy in most of the pictures of Denmark," says Jørgen Leth. "But not in my film. I would like to show you some authentic, clear and beautiful pictures from this strange country."
poster
?
5.6
/20/

I Am Talking To You (2013)
A documentary about the Danish artist John Kørner.
poster
?
7.2
/65/
45
/2/
65
/4/

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 everyday life. Over five years Leth and his small crew witnessed dramatic events, but he also captured moments of sensuality and beauty in his epic and very personal documentary.
poster
?
10
/1/
60
/1/

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 civil-war-ravaged El Salvador.
poster
?
5.9
/36/
10
/1/
57
/3/

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 artistic culmination that is ping-pong at its best, it records China's comeback into the international sports world.
poster
?
6.4
/59/
53
/3/
66
/7/

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 King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."
poster
?
6.4
/74/
40
/1/
89
/5/

I Walk (2020)
Documentary about Danish filmmaker, sports journalist and poet Jørgen Leth who struggles after surviving a major earthquake in Haiti.
poster
?
7.2
/43/
10
/1/
80
/2/

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.
poster
71
?
7.4
/106/
80
/1/
60
/7/

New Scenes from America (2003)
A look at post-9/11 America by the Danish documentarian.
poster
?

Tropical Mix (2007)
A short sequence through the tropics.


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