Going for gold on celluloid

JAKARTA (JP): The opening of the Sydney Olympics is only a hop, skip and a jump away.

There are bound to be some who will feel motivated by Olympic fever to put on a pair of sneakers and head off to the track at Senayan. The rest of us will feel quite content to stay put in our comfy chairs and watch from the sidelines.

For two definitive documentaries on Olympics past, try to get your hands on the following:

Olympische Spiele 1936 (Olympiad). Directed by Leni Reifenstahl.

Great director or Nazi stooge? It was the question which dogged Reifenstahl throughout the rest of her career (and just how close she was to old Adolf anyway?). The story of the Olympics in which American Jesse Owens' athletic prowess put paid to the idea of Aryan supremacy. Britain's Time Out magazine said "the human body is eroticized in a paean to physical beauty that suggests how compatible fetishism and fascism can be". You be the judge.

Tokyo Olympiad 1964. Directed by Kon Ichikawa.

A more than two-hour immersion in the 1964 Olympics, the first held in Asia, by feature-film director Ichikawa. It was the Games of American Wyomia Tyus, Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila and Australia's Dawn Fraser (who was suspended from competition for 10 years after trying to steal flags from the Imperial Palace). Time Out said "the only sustained 'performance' is Abebe Bikila's triumph in the marathon, but the rest is funny, sexy, beautiful or atmospheric enough to give a lot of pleasure to the open-eyed". (brc)