Olympia Part One: Festival of Nations
©️ 2019 International Olympic Committee - all rights reserved
This is the first part of the two-part Olympia, an official documentary of the Berlin summer Olympics held in Nazi Germany in 1936. It shows the torch relay, staged for the first time at these Olympics, as well as the opening ceremony and various track and field events. At the time it was acclaimed for its groundbreaking visual expression, including dynamic moving shots and high-speed photography that captured sports as spectacle, and it won the highest award at the Venice International Film Festival in 1938. While it remains keystone of sports films that impacted film history, it has always had both admirers and detractors, like its director Leni Riefenstahl, whose films were employed as propaganda.
Leni RIEFENSTAHL
- Born 1902 in Berlin, Germany
- Died 2003 in Pöcking, Germany
Photo by urcameras (CC PDM 1.0)
Leni Riefenstahl was a German filmmaker and photographer. After a period as an actress, during which she appeared in films by Arnold Fanck, pioneer of alpine filmmaking, she became a filmmaker herself. For her Triumph of the Will (1935), a documentary of a 1934 Nazi Party rally, and Olympia Part One: Festival of Nations and Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (both 1938), documenting the 1936 Berlin Olympics, she was criticized for the rest of her life as a propagandist for the Nazi regime. After World War II, she repeatedly asserted that what she pursued in these works was art and beauty, and not propaganda, and until her death she did not believe she had any responsibility for the war.
Selected Works & Awards
| 2002 | Impressions of the Deep |
| 1954 | Tiefland |
| 1935 | Triumph of the Will |
| 1933 | Victory of the Faith |
| 1932 | The Blue Light |
Information
Thu,Sep 19,13:30
Wed,Sep 25.15:30
Map
Aichi Arts Center Art Space A (12F)
Address
1-13-2 Higashisakura,Higashi-ku, Nagoya
461-8525 JAPAN
Access
・5 minutes on foot from Sakae-Machi Station on the Meitetsu Seto Line.