1928 • Italy
Made by Istituto Luce, the Italian film company controlled by Benito Mussolini since 1925, THE IX OLYMPIAD IN AMSTERDAM may, understandably, highlight Italian participants, but it is the first Olympic documentary that describes the techniques of certain events with useful particulars
Up Next in 100 Years of Olympic Films: 1912–2012
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The Olympic Games, Amsterdam 1928
Directed by Wilhelm Prager and Jules Perel • 1928 • Netherlands
Though shorter than the Italian film covering the same 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, the intimacy on display in this Dutch film is more rewarding and less perfunctory.
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Youth of the World
Directed by Carl Junghans • 1936 • Germany
This film, like Leni Riefenstahl's infamous OLYMPIA, was produced by Adolf Hitler's Reichsfilmkammer. YOUTH OF THE WORLD, a celebration of the 1936 Winter Games, may forgo narration, but its visuals throb with kinetic energy and visual poetry.
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Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nat...
Directed by Leni Riefenstahl • 1938 • Germany
More has been written about Leni Riefenstahl's OLYMPIA than about any other sports documentary in history. Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic e...
