Sport documentary  

"Olympia1: Fest der volker" 1937

1964

Featuring Fest der Volker (Festival of the People) and Fest der Schonheit (Festival of Beauty), Riefenstahl represents the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games as a pagan celebration of the human body and its achievements. Important, influential and highly controversial.

Leni Riefenstahl produced and directed this fascinating documentary, filled with breathtaking moments and images. Based on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games and dedicated to the honor and glory of the youth of the World, it is considered the greatest sports documentary of all time. Germany, 1938, B&W, 111 minutes, English commentary.

Leni Riefenstahl directed a two-part film named "Olympia" on the Olympic Games in Berlin 1936. The Olympia project swallowed four years of Riefenstahl''s life and resulted in the films "Olympia I - The Festival of the People" (Fest der Vlker) and "Olympia II - The Festival of Beauty" (Fest der Schnheit). Many cameras and much equipment were needed to make the films. The shooting techniques and the equipment developed rapidly, as Riefenstahl''s ideas were realised.

Riefenstahl wanted to show the Olympics as a reincarnation of the physical culture of the Antique. In the Olympia-films the athletes are beautiful. They are cut out of their normal environment and pictured with the magnificent and powerful nature as background.

Olympia was completed in 1938 and was received with enthusiasm in Germany. In addition to a German film award it won the award for the best feature film at Venice Film Festival.

Nazi or not?
War broke out in 1939. Riefenstahl started filming a fictive feature, "Tiefland" (Lowland). However, the feature could not be finished during the war and after it, the film was confiscated. Tiefland had its premiere in 1954 only.

Germany lost the war and Riefenstahl was accused and trialed among the Nazis. In addition to that the French confiscated her property. Riefenstahl was suspected to have been Hitler''s lover and she was accused of having made skilful propaganda for the Nazis. She was not convicted in the trials, but was labelled as a Nazi sympathiser.





TOKYO OLYMPIAD (1965)Director: Kon Ichikawa
"Easily The Best Film Ever Made On The Olympics." -Variety

A spectacle of magnificent proportions, Kon Ichikawa''s Tokyo Olympiad ranks among the greatest documents of sport ever committed to film. Utilizing glorious widescreen cinematography, Ichikawa examines the beauty and rich drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo, creating a catalog of extraordinary observations that range from the expansive to the intimate. The glory, despair, passion, and suffering of Olympic competition are rendered with lyricism and technical mastery, culminating in an inspiring testament to the beauty of the human body and the strength of the human spirit.

"Festival of the people" Leni Riefenstahl
From Dancer to Filmmaker - Leni Riefenstahl
Kon Ichikawa
Review

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