08/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed deliver a deep Danish dive into the sounds and silences of contemporary jazz, its players and their thoughts

Danish poetry and experimental filmmaking doyen Jørgen Leth is back at the Venice International Film Festival, where his and Lars von Trier’s collaborative escapade The Five Obstructions opened in 2003. This year checks off a double return, as Music for Black Pigeons [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koe…
film profile], co-directed with acclaimed countryman documentarist Andreas Koefoed (The Lost Leonardo [+see also:
trailer
interview: Andreas Koefoed
film profile]) and playing out of competition, marks a rare and belated venture into one of Leth’s early great loves, namely jazz music.

In fact, his very first film Stopforbud (Danish for clearway, also reads as “Stop for Bud”), features American pianist legend Bud Powell. Shot in Copenhagen in 1963, the film anticipates Bertrand Tavernier’s Round Midnight, based partly on Powell’s sojourn in Europe around 1960. Both in his poetry writing and as a music reviewer at the time, Leth celebrated the likes of Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz and other American greats as well as innovative Europeans like Krzysztof Komeda and Jan Johansson, many of whom he met and sometimes befriended. Curiously, bar the debut, his films have had little to no jazz address and he has usually preferred modern art music as his chosen soundtrack. Until now, encouraged by young compatriot Koefoed, who has tuned in to a more contemporary scene, inviting his elder statesman colleague along for the ride.

Protagonist and common denominator of Music for Black Pigeons is Danish guitarist Jakob Bro, whose 2021 album Uma Elmo contains the track that lends its name to the film’s title. Frequently recording for the ECM label, Bro’s style of jazz represents a free and lyrical breed, contemplative yet swinging, praised by admirers for its spacious sound ambience and its adventurous diversity of the players involved. Like guitarist Bill Frisell astutely puts it, “How old you are, how young you are, what colour you are – all that stuff… disappears.” Thus, a Norwegian, a Haitian and a Japanese can easily be heard interacting together, or indeed an American or a Dane, of every age. Since 2008, Koefoed has followed and filmed Bro during various stage and recording dates involving iconic players like Frisell, Lee Konitz, Thomas Morgan, Paul Motian, Mark Turner, Joe Lovano, Midori Takada, Andrew Cyrille, Palle Mikkelborg, Jon Christensen and producer Manfred Eicher, chief guru of the ECM universe of sound and silence. Leth, heard offscreen unseen, conducts a series of close-up interviews, diving deep into the creators and their thoughts – as well as silences when words may fail. Veteran player Konitz steals several scenes, showing his $150 alto saxophone, bought in 1945 and still in use, chatting to an infant toddler after a concert in Sisimiut, Greenland, and sporting a colourful sweater, eaten by moths but sewed into one piece by a nice tailor around the corner. All-encompassing is the music itself, captured crisply and intimately, bringing lasting statements from those now gone - Konitz, Motian and Christensen all passed away during the making – p(l)aying it forward to those still here. “It’s gonna outlive me,” says Konitz about his trusty 1945 sax, swinging its way well into the end credits, and beyond.

Music for Black Pigeons was produced by Ánorâk Film.

Photogallery 06/09/2022: Venice 2022 - Music for Black Pigeons

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Jakob Bro, Jørgen Leth, Andreas Koefoed, Alberto Barbera, Emile Hertling Péronard, Adam Nielsen, Adam Jandrup
© 2022 Dario Caruso for Cineuropa - @studio.photo.dar, Dario Caruso