Jørgen Leth

Directing

Jørgen Leth

Born — Died

1937-06-14 — 2025-09-29

Place of birth

Århus, Denmark

Known for

Directing

Credits

67 titles

Jørgen Leth was a Danish poet and film director who is considered a leading figure in experimental documentary film making. Most notable are his epic documentary A Sunday in Hell and his surrealistic short film The Perfect Human. He is also a sports commentator for Danish television and is represented by the film production company, Sunset Productions.

Known for

Spise med Price poster
8.5

The artistically streaked brothers James and Adam Price learned early on to LOVE food and both are right at home in the kitchen. In this series they alternate between working together and competing against each other as they take on each episode's theme of food. Some dishes are done the old fashioned way, some get a twist but all is done in a humorous atmosphere of good-natured bantering, teasing and story telling.

Spise med Price

2008

Mit Spanien poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Mit Spanien

2016

Mit Frankrig poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Mit Frankrig

2015

Hos Hans poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Hos Hans

2018

The Five Obstructions poster
6.9

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.

The Five Obstructions

2003

Music for Black Pigeons poster
6.8

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.

Music for Black Pigeons

2023

Film credits

2010s · 6 titles

Klown poster
6.5

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 where there's plenty there for the guys, a spree of drinking and women. Not the best example to set for young Bo. And how do their partners see it all?

Klown

2010

Laamb poster
NR

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 without any protection. The 22­-year-­old cattle herder Ndoff has been chosen to compete in an annual talent event in Dakar, and faces a possible breakthrough as a pro wrestler. LAAMB is the story of a sport filled with myths and extreme voodoo rituals, and a modern tale about fighting one’s way out of poverty.

Laamb

2013

The Erotic Man poster
4.8

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.

The Erotic Man

2010

Komeda: A Soundtrack for a Life poster
7.8

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 the composer by the means of his melodic sounds. It is a reflection on his soundtracks, which changed the common film scores forever. It is a contemporary document about the attitude to life in a time of social, political and cultural change after war, about work and exodus of Polish artists in the 50s and 60s. A story about how film music is created and how it affects people. Directors who worked with Komeda and who are also friends talk about him: Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski, Henning Carlsen and Andrzej Wajda. His wife, Zofia Komeda, and his sister, Irena Orlowska, recollect him.

Komeda: A Soundtrack for a Life

2010

Født til Filmen poster
NR

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 (mother), Asger Leth (brother), Jørgen Leth (stepfather), friends and people from the film industry it tells us about Stine's life from being a child actress to becoming a celebrated young star of the 80's. The film is a comment on today's worshipping of stars, and how fame has almost become a drug in itself. It’s as if here’s every answer to any doubt. But as Stine's story shows, reality can actually be the opposite.

Født til Filmen

2015

Jørgen Leth & Co.: Vi Sidder Bare Her poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Jørgen Leth & Co.: Vi Sidder Bare Her

2018

2000s · 7 titles

The Five Obstructions poster
6.9

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.

The Five Obstructions

2003

No artwork available
NR

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

ABCinema

2009

Mona's World poster
6.1

Mona, a single girl in her thirties, leads a life filled with adventure and romance. In her dreams that is. But an ordinary visit to the bank is about to make her real life as exciting as her imagination, and moreover, during this encounter she is introduced to the man of her dreams in a way she never dreamt of.

Mona's World

2001

Obstruction #1 - The Perfect Human: Cuba poster
NR

The first short film in Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions.

Obstruction #1 - The Perfect Human: Cuba

2003

No artwork available
5.2

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

Aarhus

2005

Sanselighedens pris poster
6.0

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 Jørgen Flindt Pedersen contacted Jørgen Leth, who had been hiding from the public, to hear his reaction. "The price of sensuality" follows Leth for a year after its publication, in quiet moments outside the limelight, until the farewell the following late summer, when Leth goes home to Haiti.

Sanselighedens pris

2007

Freedom of Space: Skateboard Culture and the Public Space poster
NR

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.

Freedom of Space: Skateboard Culture and the Public Space

2006

Series credits

Behind the camera

The Five Obstructions poster
6.9

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.

The Five Obstructions

2003

The Five Obstructions poster
6.9

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.

The Five Obstructions

2003

Music for Black Pigeons poster
6.8

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.

Music for Black Pigeons

2023

Music for Black Pigeons poster
6.8

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.

Music for Black Pigeons

2023

I Am Alive poster
NR

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.

I Am Alive

1999

I Am Alive poster
NR

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.

I Am Alive

1999

Frændeløs poster
7.5

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.

Frændeløs

1970

I Walk poster
8.9

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

I Walk

2020

Chinese Ping-Pong poster
6.5

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.

Chinese Ping-Pong

1972

No artwork available
5.0

Short film about hippie life in Nepal.

Near Heaven, Near Earth

1968

No artwork available
5.0

Short film about hippie life in Nepal.

Near Heaven, Near Earth

1968

Rødovrefilmen poster
NR

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)

Rødovrefilmen

1969

Stop for Bud poster
6.9

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."

Stop for Bud

1963

Obstruction #1 - The Perfect Human: Cuba poster
NR

The first short film in Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions.

Obstruction #1 - The Perfect Human: Cuba

2003

Obstruction #1 - The Perfect Human: Cuba poster
NR

The first short film in Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier's The Five Obstructions.

Obstruction #1 - The Perfect Human: Cuba

2003

Notes on Love poster
5.0

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.

Notes on Love

1989

Notes on Love poster
5.0

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.

Notes on Love

1989

The Perfect Human poster
6.6

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.

The Perfect Human

1968

The Perfect Human poster
6.6

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.

The Perfect Human

1968

No artwork available
4.7

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.

Traberg

1992

No artwork available
4.7

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.

Traberg

1992

A Sunday in Hell poster
7.2

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

A Sunday in Hell

1977

A Sunday in Hell poster
7.2

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

A Sunday in Hell

1977

Pelota II poster
NR

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

Pelota II

2017

Good and Evil poster
5.1

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.

Good and Evil

1975

Good and Evil poster
5.1

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.

Good and Evil

1975

Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Andy Warhol Eating a Hamburger

1982

Stars and the Water Carriers poster
6.7

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."

Stars and the Water Carriers

1974

Stars and the Water Carriers poster
6.7

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."

Stars and the Water Carriers

1974

The Search poster
5.8

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.

The Search

1970

The Search poster
5.8

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.

The Search

1970

No artwork available
5.2

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

Aarhus

2005

No artwork available
5.2

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

Aarhus

2005

The Erotic Man poster
4.8

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.

The Erotic Man

2010

The Erotic Man poster
4.8

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.

The Erotic Man

2010

No artwork available
6.3

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.

Motion Picture

1970

No artwork available
6.3

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.

Motion Picture

1970

No artwork available
5.0

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.

Look Forward to a Time of Security

1964

No artwork available
7.0

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.

Dancing Bournonville

1979

The Deer Garden: The Romantic Forest poster
6.5

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

The Deer Garden: The Romantic Forest

1970