A masterpiece of poetic documentary filmmaking, presented in its original almost-3-hour version. Ichikawa was inspired by Leni Riefenstahl's immortal coverage of the 1936 Olympics-and with 164 camera operators and a film crew of 500, his documentary on the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was itself an Olympian feat. But Ichikawa was intent on making "a visual poem of peace and human equality." The result: every frame is an exercise in film experimentation, "an idiosyncratic, formally innovative, and surprisingly intimate film." (James Quandt) Tokyo Olympiad, while unique in Ichikawa's oeuvre, fits perfectly: "I tried to grasp the solemnity of the moment when man defies his limits, and to express the solitude of the athlete who, in order to win, struggles against himself," Ichikawa said. "I wanted people to rediscover with astonishment that wonder which is a human being."