Synopsis:
What is the perfect body – and how do you get it? People were already grappling with these questions 100 years ago. Wilhelm Prager’s and Nicholas Kaufmann’s documentary “Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit” (Ways to Strength and Beauty), filmed in 1925 for the UFA cultural department, first criticises modern society, which weakens and deforms the human body through industrial work and office activities. According to the motto “A healthy mind lives in a healthy body”, the didactically prepared educational film aims in six chapters at a re-appropriation of a physical ideal state according to the model of antiquity and propagates above all physical training for this purpose.

The most radical thing about Prager’s film is its revealing imagery: the naked or scantily clad human body is literally celebrated in stylised documentary scenes during the most diverse activities – body care, gymnastics, sport and dance. In the 1920s, this struck a chord with the times: it was an expression of a new body consciousness that had been established since the beginning of the 20th century in the form of the life reform movement and naturalism. But “Ways to Strength and Beauty” is also a valuable film-historical document that can be seen as an ideological precursor of the National Socialist cult of the body, as it was later celebrated in propaganda films by Leni Riefenstahl, for example. Riefenstahl appears in Prager’s film as an extra in a dance group.

Wege zu Kraft und Schoenheit (1925).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 48 min
Size: 	4.66 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	6 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.116
Audio
#1:  	zxx 2.0ch AAC LC @ 160 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/5BC4F17B19E632D/Wege_zu_Kraft_und_Schoenheit_(1925).mkv

Language(s):No dialogue
Subtitles:German intertitles

The post Nicholas Kaufmann & Wilhelm Prager – Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit – Ein Film über moderne Körperkultur AKA Ways to Strength and Beauty (1925) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Spanning fifty-three movies and forty-one editions of the Olympic Games, 100 Years of Olympic Films: 1912–2012 is the culmination of a monumental, award-winning archival project encompassing dozens of new restorations by the International Olympic Committee. The documentaries collected here cast a cinematic eye on some of the most iconic moments in the history of modern sports, spotlighting athletes who embody the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”: Jesse Owens shattering world records on the track in 1936 Berlin, Jean-Claude Killy dominating the Grenoble slopes in 1968, Joan Benoit breaking away to win the Games’ first women’s marathon in Los Angeles in 1984. In addition to the impressive ten-feature contribution of Bud Greenspan, this stirring collective chronicle of triumph and defeat includes such documentary landmarks as Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia and Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad, along with captivating lesser-known works by major directors like Claude Lelouch, Carlos Saura, and Miloš Forman. It also offers a fascinating glimpse of the development of film itself, and of the technological progress that has brought viewers ever closer to the action. Traversing continents and decades, reflecting the social, cultural, and political changes that have shaped our recent history, this remarkable movie marathon showcases a hundred years of human endeavor.

12GB | 3h 12m | 1440×1080 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/C7CC043B72A27B8/The.Olympic.Games.Amsterdam.1928.1928.1080p.BluRay.x264-SUMMERX.mkv

Language(s):Dutch
Subtitles:English

The post Wilhelm Prager – De olympische spelen AKA The Olympic Games, Amsterdam 1928 (1928) first appeared on Cinema of the World.