Tokyo Olympiad
Tokyo Olympiad • 2h 50m
Directed by Kon Ichikawa • 1965 • Japan
A spectacle of magnificent proportions and remarkable intimacy, Kon Ichikawa’s TOKYO OLYMPIAD remains one of the greatest films ever made about sports. Supervising a vast team of technicians using scores of cameras, Ichikawa captured the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo in glorious widescreen images, using cutting-edge telephoto lenses and exquisite slow motion to create lyrical, idiosyncratic poetry from the athletic drama surging all around him. Drawn equally to the psychology of losers and winners—including the legendary Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, who receives the film’s most exalted tribute—Ichikawa captures the triumph, passion, and suffering of competition with a singular humanistic vision, and in doing so effected a transformative influence on the art of documentary filmmaking.
Up Next in Tokyo Olympiad
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TOKYO OLYMPIAD Commentary
Recorded in 2001, this commentary features film scholar and Olympic Games expert Peter Cowie.
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Peter Cowie on TOKYO OLYMPIAD
This introduction by film scholar and Olympic Games expert Peter Cowie was recorded in Montreux, Switzerland, in January 2020.
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Kon Ichikawa: Preproduction, 1964
In 1964, the Japanese television network NTV interviewed director Kon Ichikawa as he was preparing to shoot the Tokyo Olympic Games. The interview is peresented here in its entirety.
