Culinary Adventures and Films of the Olympic Games with Don and Liz Whelan
I’m not going to bury the lede here. This film was disappointing. If the image above looks like a bit of an unfocused mess, that’s intentional. Bud Greenspan Presents Vancouver 2010: Stories of Olympic Glory 2010116 MINUTESBud Greenspan, Nancy Beffa Vancouver marked the eleventh and final outing for the late Bud Greenspan, cementing what is […]
First is the story of the Games of London 2012; or rather, the story of a selected group of first-time Olympians. Director Caroline Rowland—who won the job after creating the London bid film—has developed a new approach to Olympic documentaries. Though at first blush it seems to have a common thread with Bud Greenspan’s films, […]
In our ongoing review of Olympic films, we’ve begun to see some patterns emerge. We have the silent era films, which are mostly a string of newsreel-style segments. There is the mid-century meet-a-city tourism genre. There is a select group of films with artistic viewpoints. There is the enormous Greenspan body of work. White Rock […]
The Games of the XV Olympiad were held in Helsinki, Finland in the summer of 1952. It was a long-awaited festival: Helsinki had originally been selected to host the 1940 Games after the original host, Tokyo, withdrew due to Japan’s invasion of China. But the city never got to welcome the world in 1940, because, […]
Bud Greenspan’s Torino 2006: Stories of Olympic Glory 200788 MINUTESBud Greenspan Torino 2006 marks the fourth Greenspan film we’ve watched, the first from the new century, and the penultimate outing in his collection of 10 films. His signature formula is familiar by now. This particular film has a somewhat peculiar provenance, however: it’s one of […]
1992 was a particularly fascinating moment in time: in 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. In 1990 Germany was reunified. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed. Change was truly in the cold, crisp air of the French Alps. One Light, One World 1992104 MINUTESJoe Jay Jalbert,R. Douglas Copsey The XVI Winter Games at Albertville, France […]
Last time we discussed the two small films of Melbourne/Stockholm 1956. This week we’re going to move on to the Summer Games proper with a pair of films focused on the breadth of events held in Melbourne. Despite having a similar scope, they’re incredibly different. Overwhelming Speed Olympic Games, 1956 195660 MINUTESPeter Whitchurch Olympic Games, […]
After Bud Greenspan’s success in filming the 1984 Los Angeles Games, he turned his attentions to the XV Olympic Winter Games. Calgary ’88: 16 Days of Glory is the second milestone in the Greenspan catalog. As a child, Calgary was really the first Games I was fully aware of, and I followed the events closely. […]
The summer Games held in Rome in 1960 were probably the first truly modern Games. Fittingly, The Grand Olympics was a new type of Olympic film.
In 1994 the Olympic Movement made a major change and shifted schedules, alternating between the Summer and Winter Games every two years. The small Norwegian village of Lillehammer was the host for this first staggered edition of the Winter Games, coming 24 months after Albertville, France had its own moment in the snow. Lillehammer ’94: […]