100 Years of Olympic Films Box Set is being released by The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection has announced their upcoming release of 100 Years of Olympic Films. Spanning fifty-three movies and forty-one editions of the Olympic Summer and Winter Games, this one-of-a-kind collection assembles, for the first time, a century’s worth of Olympic films – the culmination of a monumental, award-winning archival project encompassing dozens of new restorations by the International Olympic Committee.
Spanning fifty-three movies and forty-one editions of the Olympic Summer and Winter Games, this one-of-a-kind collection assembles, for the first time, a century’s worth of Olympic films—the culmination of a monumental, award-winning archival project encompassing dozens of new restorations by the International Olympic Committee. These documentaries cast a cinematic eye on some of the most iconic moments in the history of modern sports, spotlighting athletes who embody the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”: Jesse Owens shattering sprinting world records on the track in 1936 Berlin, Jean Claude-Killy dominating the slopes of Grenoble in 1968, Joan Benoit breaking away to win the first-ever women’s marathon on the streets of Los Angeles in 1984.
In addition to the work of Bud Greenspan, the man behind an impressive ten Olympic features, this stirring collective chronicle of triumph and defeat includes such landmarks of the documentary form as Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia and Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad, along with lesser-known but captivating contributions by major directors like Claude Lelouch, Carlos Saura, and Milos Forman. It also serves as a fascinating window onto the formal development of cinema itself, as well as the technological progress that has enabled the viewer, over the years, to get ever closer to the action. Traversing continents and decades, and reflecting as well the social, cultural, and political changes that have shaped our recent history, this remarkable marathon of films offers nothing less than a panorama of a hundred years of human endeavour.
Both the 32-Blu-ray edition and the 43-DVD edition will retail for $399.95 and will be available for pre-order on November 7, officially released on 5th December 2017.
SPECIAL EDITION COLLECTOR’S SET FEATURES:
- 53 newly restored films from 41 editions of the Olympic Games, presented together for the first time
- Landmark 4K restorations of Olympia, Tokyo Olympiad, and Visions of Eight, among other titles
- New scores for the silent films, composed by Maud Nelissen, Donald Sosin, and Frido ter Beek
- A lavishly illustrated, 216-page hardcover book, featuring notes on the films by cinema historian Peter Cowie; a foreword by Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee; a short history of the restoration project by restoration producer Adrian Wood; and hundreds of photographs from a century of Olympic Games
Films included:
Stockholm 1912
The Games of the V Olympiad Stockholm, 1912 (dir. Adrian Wood)Chamonix 1924
The Olympic Games Held at Chamonix in 1924 (dir. Jean de Rovera)Paris 1924
The Olympic Games as They Were Practiced in Ancient Greece (dir. Jean de Rovera)
The Olympic Games in Paris 1924 (dir. Jean de Rovera)St. Moritz 1928
The White Stadium (dirs. Arnold Fanck, Othmar Gurtner)Amsterdam 1928
The IX Olympiad in Amsterdam (dir. unknown)
The Olympic Games, Amsterdam 1928 (dir. Wilhelm Prager; supervisor Jules Perel)Garmisch-Partenkirchen 1936
Youth of the World (dir. Carl Junghans)Berlin 1936
Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations (dir. Leni Riefenstahl)
Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (dir. Leni Riefenstahl)St. Moritz 1948
Fight Without Hate (dir. André Michel)London 1948
XIVth Olympiad: The Glory of Sport (dir. Castleton Knight)Oslo 1952
The VI Olympic Winter Games, Oslo 1952 (dir. Tancred Ibsen)Helsinki 1952
Where the World Meets (dir. Hannu Leminen)
Gold and Glory (dir. Hannu Leminen)
Memories of the Olympic Summer of 1952 (dir. unknown)Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956
White Vertigo (dir. Giorgio Ferroni)Melbourne/Stockholm 1956
Olympic Games, 1956 (dir. Peter Whitchurch)
The Melbourne Rendez-vous (dir. René Lucot)
Alain Mimoun (dir. Louis Gueguen)
The Horse in Focus (dir. unknown)Squaw Valley 1960
People, Hopes, Medals (dir. Heribert Meisel)Rome 1960
The Grand Olympics (dir. Romolo Marcellini)Innsbruck 1964
IX Olympic Winter Games, Innsbruck 1964 (dir. Theo Hörmann)Tokyo 1964
Tokyo Olympiad (dir. Kon Ichikawa)
Sensation of the Century (prod. Taguchi Suketaro, supervisor Nobumasa Kawamoto)Grenoble 1968
13 Days in France (dirs. Claude Lelouch, François Reichenbach)
Snows of Grenoble (dirs. Jacques Ertaud, Jean-Jacques Languepin)Mexico City 1968
The Olympics in Mexico (dir. Alberto Isaac)Sapporo 1972
Sapporo Winter Olympics (dir. Masahiro Shinoda)Munich 1972
Visions of Eight (dirs. Miloš Forman, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouch, Yuri Ozerov, Arthur Penn, Michael Pfleghar, John Schlesinger, Mai Zetterling)Innsbruck 1976
White Rock (dir. Tony Maylam)Montreal 1976
Games of the XXI Olympiad (dirs. Jean-Claude Labrecque, Jean Beaudin, Marcel Carrière, Georges Dufaux)Lake Placid 1980
Olympic Spirit (dirs. Drummond Challis, Tony Maylam)Moscow 1980
O Sport, You Are Peace! (dir. Yuri Ozerov)Sarajevo 1984
A Turning Point (dir. Kim Takal)Los Angeles 1984
16 Days of Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Calgary 1988
Calgary ’88: 16 Days of Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Seoul 1988
Seoul 1988 (dir. Lee Kwang-soo)
Hand in Hand (dir. Im Kwon-taek)
Beyond All Barriers (dir. Lee Ji-won)Albertville 1992
One Light, One World (dirs. Joe Jay Jalbert, R. Douglas Copsey)Barcelona 1992
Marathon (dir. Carlos Saura)Lillehammer 1994
Lillehammer ’94: 16 Days of Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Atlanta 1996
Atlanta’s Olympic Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Nagano 1998
Nagano ’98 Olympics: Stories of Honor and Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)
Olympic Glory (dir. Kieth Merrill)Sydney 2000
Sydney 2000: Stories of Olympic Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Salt Lake City 2002
Salt Lake City 2002: Bud Greenspan’s Stories of Olympic Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Athens 2004
Bud Greenspan’s Athens 2004: Stories of Olympic Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Turin 2006
Bud Greenspan’s Torino 2006: Stories of Olympic Glory (dir. Bud Greenspan)Beijing 2008
The Everlasting Flame (dir. Gu Jun)Vancouver 2010
Bud Greenspan Presents Vancouver 2010: Stories of Olympic Glory (prods. Bud Greenspan, Nancy Beffa)London 2012
First (dir. Caroline Rowland)