Dan Holmberg

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.

A film essay which includes interviews with the perpetrators of genocide committed over the last 50 years - from World War II to the Balkan conflict. What enables some people to commit mass killings during war? And how do they live with such deeds on conscience? This is at the heart of director Ove Nyholm's long-awaited film 'Anatomy of Evil'. Behind the film lies extensive scientific research, resulting in numerous impressive candid interviews with World War II hangovers and the Balkan war, which lift the carpet for some of the reflections behind their gruesome actions. Each interviewed has their personal story to tell. The sound side plays a significant role in the film and reinforces the emptiness and melancholy expressed by the interviewed persons.

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

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.

Em 1967, Jorgen Leth realizou um curta-metragem de 12 minutos chamado The Perfect Human. Fã incondicional desse curta, Lars Von Trier desafiou o veterano diretor a produzir cinco remakes desse mesmo filme. Sempre no comando da situação, Von Trier coloca todo tipo de obstáculo, com o intento deliberado de tornar as coisas difíceis, e num dos episódios ele manda o sexagenário Leth até Cuba, para filmar em condições muito adversas. Em outro momento, ele ordena que um dos remakes seja feito em desenho animado. Exercício de estilo e poder, o documentário tenta desvendar as concessões e as limitações que os realizadores enfrentam para viabilizarem suas produções.

Haiti. Uden title is a kaleidoscopic, dramatic documentary from this chaotic Caribbean country and comprises a mixture of material on video, 16 mm and 35 mm, dating in some scenes right back shooting on Leth's Udenrigskorrespondent (1982).

A large family in London's East End is celebrating a birthday party. Children and grandchildren from this extensive family have come to the party from all over England. At the party the family members talk about hope and dreams for their children. The past and present lives of various relatives are compared with each other, while fragments from radio-programmes from the fourties and the fifties draw an emotional and historical line. Set against this archive material are fierce images of modern day family life in urban England in the year 1993. This makes the film a collage of dreams, memories and images of present-day life.

A stil-life of marvellous Danish footballer Michael Laudrups performance on the Barcelona dreamteam 1989-94.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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."