Sports--the reality, the obsession, and the point where the two meet--are the subject of Elem Klimov's Sport, Sport, Sport. The Soviet director combines fictional imagery with documentary footage, edited into a brilliant, often humorous report on the world's favorite pastime and preoccupation. The torture of training (from teenage competition swimmers to children at sports camp); the inescapable reality of broken bones (high jumper Valery Brumel); death by dehydration (a runner in a hot Philadelphia race); the politics of winning (Jesse Owens, 1936); the brutality of boxing and other contact sports.... These and hundreds of other images are woven together around the fictional persona of Uncle Volodya, a Russian masseur who has many stories to tell, some true, some not. A highlight of his fantastic accounts is a staged medieval jousting match, replete with gladiators and costumed audience, representing “an early Soviet Sports Event.” Made in 1971, the film premiered in Moscow in 1978 and had its U.S. premiere at Los Angeles' Filmex in 1979--one year away from the Moscow Olympics. At that time, Variety's Ron Holloway noted, “(It) offers much critical food for thought as the glorification of sports keeps escalating year by year.” As the politics of sports invades California, it's time to take another look at Sport, Sport, Sport.