Background
Thorsen, Jens Jorgen was born on February 2, 1932 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Son of Suend Borge and Grethe Hogaard (Andersen) Thorsen.
Thorsen, Jens Jorgen was born on February 2, 1932 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Son of Suend Borge and Grethe Hogaard (Andersen) Thorsen.
Candidate philosophy, Copenhagen University, Denmark, 1969. Diploma (honorary), London Film Institute, 1974.
Thorsen began his artistic career attending periodically the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. This included a number of public displays protesting various governmental issues. Thorsen also wrote, directed, and starred in a number of films, the most notable of them being Stille dage i Clichy (Quiet Days in Clichy), based on the Henry Miller novel.
In painting, Thorsen painted a number of abstract works, which have become increasingly collectible.
He also stirred up controversy with a work depicting Jesus in a manner some considered pornographic. Thorsen planned a film called The Many Faces of Jesus, later The Sex Life of Jesus, and was to have involved both heterosexual and homosexual acts.
The film was to have been made in Britain, but it faced intense opposition from Christian morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse, pressure groups, as well as from the Queen, then Prime Minister James Callaghan, the Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggan, and Pope Paul VI, who called the film "an insult.. which transforms Christ into sacrilegious bait for filthy falseness". The Return of Jesus (1992) was made after the ban on the project was rescinded in 1990.
Children: Marianne, Hannibal, Snild, Sej.