Jørgen Leth — Playwright (7)

Movie

Composer Meets Quartet (1987)
Composer Meets Quartet WikiData IMDb TMDB
other title: Danish Music at the Louisiana
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.

Movie

Step on Silence (1981)
Step on Silence WikiData IMDb TMDB
other title: Step on silence
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.

Movie

Motion Picture (1970)
Motion Picture WikiData IMDb TMDB
other title: Motion picture
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.

Movie

Good and Evil (1975)
Det gode og det onde Douban
other title: Det gode og det onde / The Good and the Bad …
An extension of The Perfect Human, Good and Evil is a longer, more expansive pseudo-documentary portrayal of life, no less. Using capacious titles or chapter headings that Leth's narrator's voice dwells upon and impresses upon us as he toys with the cliché "Faces", "Bodies", "Things", "Necessary actions", "Unnecessary actions", Good thoughts", "Bad thoughts", "Pleasant feelings", "Unpleasant feelings", and "Words" - the film consist of aesthetically titillating and contentually almost schematic scenes shot in the void of the film studio: faces, bodies and things. A man with a shoe. Another man with a hardboiled egg which he talks about and eats. A woman gives her husband a shirt. A couple who argue. A desperate woman. And so forth. There is no psychological shading of the characters, merely a series of sketches or examples that are as if plucked out of different everyday contexts. The thread leading back to Life in Denmark is thus also clear. The dialogue is sparse and phrases or fragments of phrases recur, spoken by different actors and in different roles, which may be viewed as an accentuation of the ordinariness of these little utterances and as an awareness of language as such. Besides the professional cast work the film uses several photographic models, the circus artiste Diana Benneweis, and the cyclist ole Ritter, who all pose in front of the camera in small tableaux. In addition to the craziness of the project the film also contains a series of zany comic acts with Claus Nissen to carry them. He bursts into song while washing his hands, dances in an empty room, plays rhythmic games with the statement "Bossa nova rhythms I have nothing against" and repeats his mysterious closing line from The Perfect Human: "Today, too, I had an experience ..." The framework for the scenes is made up of a couple of visual leitmotifs by way of house fronts and landscapes. In addition a beautiful travelling shot from an avenue at dramatically appropriate moments is accompanied by one of the two tunes by Gunner Møller Pedersen from the film, sung in a girlish voice by Sanne Salomonsen. In 1999 Lars von Trier chose the film to represent Danish cinema at a number of European film festivals over a period of three years .

Movie

Life in Denmark (1971)
Livet I Danmark WikiData IMDb TMDB Douban
乔根·莱斯 Jørgen Leth actor: 阿斯各·莱斯 / Jørgen Ryg
other title: 丹麦生活 / Livet I Danmark …
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."