

Stop for Bud
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."
Cast
Bud Powell
Himself - Jazz Pianist

Dexter Gordon
Narrator (voice)
Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen
Himself
Jørn Elniff
Himself
Max Brüel
Himself
Storyline
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."
Recommended

Daybreak Express
1957

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me
2022

Justin Bieber's Believe
2013

Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell
2021

Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
2019

The Last Waltz
1978

One Direction: This Is Us
2013

The Velvet Underground
2021

Katy Perry: Part of Me
2012

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead
2018

Elvis on Tour
1972

The Last Repair Shop
2024
More Like This

Au coeur de Nikita
1990

Land Without Bread
1933

Stranger in the City
1961

Birdman
2015

The Man Who Returns from Above
2004

Marble and Concrete
2022

Sweet and Lowdown
1999

It Is Not the Brazilian Homosexuals Who Are Perverse, But the Situation in Which They Live
2021

Film for Blind Poet
2012

Je m'appelle Régine et je vous emmerde !
2025

Salvador Dalí at Work
1964
The Sacred Art of Tibet
1972