Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty
©️ 2019 International Olympic Committee - all rights reserved
Second part of the two-part Olympia, an official documentary of the Berlin summer Olympics held in Nazi Germany in 1936. It mainly portrays the athletes relaxing at the Olympic village and the swimming events, and like Part One: Festival of Nations, the power of its cinematic art is evidence of a cutting-edge production system and immense budget. Pursuing her own aesthetic vision, director Leni Riefenstahl actively engaged in negative-positive reversal, reuse of the same footage, and re-shooting of events. This seemingly simple and straightforward documentary conceals still-relevant questions about how such spectacles are produced, how lasting images are conveyed to viewers, and how they become part of history.
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 19,16:30
Wed,Sep 25,18:15
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.