Stop for Bud

Story

Synopsis

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."

Directors

Jørgen Leth, Jens Jørgen Thorsen, Ole John

Writers

Ole John

Language

Danish

Country

Denmark

Release date

17 December 1963

Ensemble

Cast

• Bud Powell

  Himself - Jazz Pianist

• 

  Dexter Gordon

  Narrator (voice)

• Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen

  Himself

• Jørn Elniff

  Himself

• Max Brüel

  Himself