Tokyo Olympiad w/Q&A | Cinematic Sports Documentary: History, Politics, Aesthetics

Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad paints a stunning picture of emotion and spectacle in capturing the 1964 Olympic Games, held in Tokyo. A feat of cutting-edge technology and cinematography, the film engages with the drama already inherent to sport, offering a vision of triumph and grief—in short, what makes the Games human—instead of results. Ichikawa’s insistence on the human, the poetic, and the aesthetic makes this a landmark film in documentary filmmaking. [169 min; documentary; Japanese with English subtitles]

A Q&A with Dr. Hannah Airriess (IU Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures) and Dr. Brandon Wallace (IU Media School) will follow the screening.