In the 1960s, he became a leading personality of Danish poetic modernism and experimental film. In his films, he creates film images similarly to a painter. At the beginning, he directs both the characters and the camera; during shooting, he stops “painting” the scenes and becomes an observer of the depicted events - the living legend Jørgen Leth celebrates 75 years this year. This is a great occasion to look back through all his internationally acclaimed films!
His film 66 Scenes from America reminds of a series of film postcards. One of them includes a scene of a hamburger being eaten in four minutes by Andy Warhol. This peculiar scene captures the emptiness of pop culture, the realistic tempo as well as the naively cynical gesture of Andy Warhol. It is the very ability to capture the uniqueness of space, time and personality by means of static composition that has brought Leth recognition. On the other hand, by taking characters out of their characteristic environment in Good and Evil, he has created a series of sketches accompanied by clichés (“good thoughts” / “bad thoughts” or “necessary actions” / “unnecessary actions”). Combining ballet scenes and images from the Trobriand Islands, his film Notes on Love captures love in its shades of restlessness and indecision.
We offer a rigorously selected retrospective of this Danish director most known for example for The Five Obstructions or his last film Erotic Man, start with an introduction to Jorgen Leth's work in the documentary Seduced Human by Truls Lie. Stream FOR FREE from November 13 to 25.
DAFilms.com is powered by Doc Alliance, a creative partnership of 7 key European documentary film festivals. Our aim is to advance the documentary genre, support its diversity and promote quality creative documentary films.