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 events in FESTIVAL OF THE NATIONS, culminating with the marathon. Despite the film's fascist origins, OLYMPIA has achieved a certain respectability and endures as a monument of cinema, and of a malevolent ideology.
Up Next in Women Make Film
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Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty
Directed by Leni Riefenstahl • 1938 • Germany
More has been written about Leni Riefenstahl's OLYMPIA than about any other sports documentary in history. In part two of OLYMPIA, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo...
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Meshes of the Afternoon
Directed by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid • 1943 • United States
Starring Maya Deren, Alexander HammidCinematic trance-maker Maya Deren and her husband Alexander Hammid launched an underground revolution with this avant-garde landmark—shot in their Hollywood home, but a world away from the co...
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La Pointe Courte
Directed by Agnès Varda • 1955 • France
Starring Silvia Monfort, Philippe NoiretThe great Agnès Varda’s film career began with this graceful, penetrating study of a marriage on the rocks, set against the backdrop of a small Mediterranean fishing village. Both a stylized depiction of the complic...
