Thirty years after making Pelota, the Danish filmmaker, Jørgen Leth, returns to the Basque countryside to film a new documentary on the star sport. This time, he is accompanied by the anthropologist, Olatz González Abrisketa. The return visit is full of surprises in time: the then champions are now coaches and there is a new generation willing to leave their hands on the court. The co-direction with the anthropologist, Olatz, gives the Danish filmmaker new ideas on which to raise the poetics of the game: “The ball is a living being. Each one is different to the rest and it must be listened to properly to recognise it”.
Jørgen Leth
Aarhus, Denmark, 1937
Jørgen Leth is a Danish film director and author. He has published 26 books and made 45 films, most of which have been distributed internationally, earning critical acclaim and receiving numerous awards from all over the world. He has received a lifelong grant from the Danish state for his achievements in filmmaking. He is an expert in travel films and portraits of places, New York Street Performers (1982), and an exceptional commentator of sporting achievements, A Sunday in Hell (1977); Michael Laudrup: A Football Player (1993); Jørgen Leth is also considered by many members of the 1990s Dogma generation to be the father of this movement and the maestro of the famous director, Lars von Trier. One of his best known films, The Perfect Human, was premiered alongside La Chinoise by Jean-Luc Godard at the Cannes Festival in 1967.
Olatz Gonzalez Abrisketa
Bilbao, 1973
Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of the Basque Country. In 2005, she published Basque Pelota: A Ritual, An Aesthetic, which was published in the United States in 2012. She has also made diverse audiovisual works, publications, art exhibitions, conferences, researches, etc. Pelota II is her first film as a Director.
