The Globe And Mail
Fri Feb 5 2010
Page: A2
Section: Sports: Olympic Games
Byline: Marsha Lederman
Dateline: VANCOUVER
VANCOUVER — VANOC will no longer show a controversial promotional video for the Olympic torch relay that used footage from a film by Leni Riefenstahl, who made propaganda films for Adolf Hitler, including Triumph of the Will.
The 1938 film Olympia documents the 1936 Berlin Olympics, hosted by Nazi Germany.
“We are retiring the … video to focus on the highlight videos that show the tremendous excitement generated by the Torch Relay as it has made its way across the country,” says a prepared statement by VANOC, which has refused repeated requests for interviews on the matter. The “highlight videos” referred to have been made as the torch has travelled across Canada.
VANOC decided to stop showing the video on Wednesday, after The Globe and Mail revealed that historians and the Canadian Jewish Congress were upset about the footage.
The VANOC video, called Lights Will Guide You Home after the lyrics in the Coldplay song that accompanies the footage, includes a shot of a torchbearer entering the stadium in Berlin in 1936.
In Ms. Riefenstahl’s original film, spectators are seen performing the Nazi salute.
In the VANOC video, the saluting crowd is obscured by a black frame, a decision VANOC defended in a statement by saying it did so “in order to respect the relay’s history while not highlighting the political environment of the day. ”
The Canadian Jewish Congress, which was initially distressed by the use of the Riefenstahl footage, expressed relief at the decision to no longer show Lights Will Guide You Home.
“We commend them for shelving the video, this particular video,” said Romy Ritter, regional director of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region.
There were similar feelings at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, where the current exhibitions, More Than Just Games: Canada & the 1936 Olympics and Framing Bodies: Sport & Spectacle in Nazi Germany, examine the Nazi ideology behind the Berlin Olympics.
“I commend VANOC for having made the right decision,” said Frieda Miller, executive director at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
“I’m confident that there was no deliberate intent on VANOC’s part to cause offence. It just underscores the difficulty of presenting such controversial material outside of its historical context. The Canadian torch relay … should not be marred by association to this darker period of Olympic history.”
