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Sunday, March
2
Admission: Free, $10 minimum
Showtimes: 7:30 and 10pm
reservations
are recommended
Both of these films we be shown simultaneously on two screens
each with the soundtracks mixed live.
Is there really such thing as Fascist Art and Architecture? Tonight,
you can compare and constrast visions of athletic excellence
via Leni Riefenstahl's pre-War Berlin Olympiad and Kon Ichikawa's
post-War Tokyo Olympiad. To me, it all looks like beautiful martial
displays of heroic bodies in motion. And it's strange how well
the soundtracks work for each other.
Leni Riefenstahl claimed Olympia:
Part 1 (1938) was not Nazi
propaganda and that she was simply a documentarian of human movement.
Her cinematography has been called fascist by many critics, most
famously by Susan Sontag in several critical essays and interviews.
Compare Olympia: Part 1 with Kon Ichikawa's gorgeous,
modernist paean, Tokyo
Olympiad (1965).
The uniforms, the crowds, the Olympic stadium, the earnest athletes;
they all convey a modernist optimism
in design and beauty that seems charming and
believable.
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