‘Tokyo 2020 Side B’: Behind the scenes of the ‘pandemic Olympics’

The Olympics have lengthy been documented on movie, beginning when cameramen recorded early Twentieth-century Video games for posterity. It was German director Leni Riefenstahl, nonetheless, who was the primary to raise what had as soon as been plodding newsreels of ceremonies and competitions into visible artwork along with her 1938 two-part documentary concerning the 1936 Berlin Olympics, “Olympia.”

Whereas celebrating Aryan magnificence and beauty to the delight of her Nazi employers, Riefenstahl additionally introduced drama and pleasure to her movie of the Video games, most notably within the sequences illustrating the triumphs of Black American observe star Jesse Owens.