The Olympic Road - Tokyo 1964 / Record of A Marathon Runner(TKO1964)

Movie Name: The Olympic Road – Tokyo 1964
Language: Japnese(English Subtitles)
Category: I
Duration: 35 Mins
Director: Sozo Okada
Cast: -
Story: Financed by Matsushita Electric, The Olympic Road – Tokyo 1964 is an exemplary PR film: Tokyo Cinema founder Sozo Okada’s short documentary is at once an illuminating overview of Japanese engineers and athletes working overtime in the run-up to the Olympics, and also a gleaming showcase of all the Matsushita electronic products making things work. A tactful, educational film which veers away from the hard-sell, The Olympic Road reveals how machines are vital to an event celebrating human strength: equipment which enhances training and performances, the devices clocking up those world records, the bulbs lighting up the highways bringing athletes and guests into Tokyo.

Movie Name: Record of A Marathon Runner
Language: Japnese(English Subtitles)
Category: I
Duration: 63 Mins
Director: Kazuo Kuroki
Cast: -
Story: After joining Tokyo Cinema, a filmmaking collective dedicated to corporate films, rookie director Kazuo Kuroki was asked to deliver a Fuji Film-commissioned documentary covering the wide expanse of the Tokyo Olympics. In a move which preceded Tokyo Olympiad – in which cineaste Kon Ichikawa defied his official backers by zeroing in on spectators and athletes rather than the spectacle of the Games itself – Kuroki came up with a film about Kenji Kimihara, a marathon runner preparing for the Olympics (he eventually finished eighth, in a race not shown in the film). With plain narration and long shots, Kuroki shows the physical and mental toil of his long-distance training and his existence in the totally unglamorous Japanese industrial hinterlands rarely celebrated on screen. Record of A Marathon Runner radiates quiet pathos which mirrors its subject’s loneliness in life.