Stopforbud (1963) aka Stop for Bud

Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth’s first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. Having met by chance, together 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. He enters the frame, he leaves the frame, the camera follows him. We are far away and close. He looks up at us, Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. The montage is followed by footage from a concert at the Montmartre jazz club, though the sound isn’t synchronized. 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, opr better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his