Directed by Miloš Forman, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch, Yuri Ozerov, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, John Schlesinger, and Mai Zetterling • 1973 • United States
In Munich in 1972, eight renowned filmmakers each brought their singular artistry to the spectacle of the Olympic Games, capturing the joy and pain of competition and the kinetic thrill of bodies in motion for an aesthetically adventurous sports film unlike any other. Made to document the Olympic Summer Games—an event that was ultimately overshadowed by the tragedy of a terrorist attack—Visions of Eight features contributions from Miloš Forman, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch, Juri Ozerov, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, John Schlesinger, and Mai Zetterling, each given carte blanche to create a short film focusing on any aspect of the Games that captured his or her imagination. The resulting films—ranging from the arresting abstraction of Penn’s pure cinema study of pole-vaulters to the playful irreverence of Forman’s musical take on the decathlon to Schlesinger’s haunting portrait of the single-minded solitude of a marathon runner—are triumphs of personal, poetic vision applied to one of the pinnacles of human achievement.
Up Next in 100 Years of Olympic Films: 1912–2012
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White Rock
Directed by Tony Maylam • 1977 • United Kingdom
British documentary film-maker and producer Tony Maylam invigorated the sports documentary genre with WHITE ROCK, an idiosyncratic and utterly engaging account of the XII Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1976. He did so by placing music front and cen...
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Games of the XXI Olympiad
Directed by Jean-Claude Labrecque, Jean Beaudin, Marcel Carrière, and Georges Dufaux • 1977 • Canada
Director Jean-Claude Labrecque elected to focus on individual athletes, both in competition and out, instead of sticking to the rigidly in place Olympics program. Labrecque and his co-directors (...
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Olympic Spirit
Directed by Drummond Challis and Tony Maylam • 1980 • United Kingdom
For their short film on the XIII Olympic Winter Games Lake Placid 1980, directors Drummond Challis and Tony Maylam assumed the challenge of making a documentary without any offscreen commentary, relying on music to sustain the ...
