The Olympic media dossier

1972: Munich

26 August-11 September
Television
US network ABC again won the television rights, which cost £7.5m for 63 hours. (NBC took the Winter Olympics in Sapporo for $6.4m—for 37 hours. Japan's public service broadcaster NHK provided coverage for eight hours a day in colour, working in temperatures as low as -10 degrees C.)
        The Games were totally overshadowed by the so-called 'Black September' taking and killing of Israeli hostages in the Olympic village on 5-6 September, events that were shown extensively on live television.

Film
The official film was Visions of Eight, the title referring to the fact that it was made in eight sections by different directors, assembled by Wolper Productions into a 108-minute feature with music by Henry Mancini. This was the first time that the official film was not made by a team from the country of the host city.
        The sections in sequence were The Beginning (Juri Ozerov, USSR), The Strongest (Mai Zetterling, Sweden), The Highest (Arthur Penn, US), The Women (Michael Pfleghar, Germany), The Fastest (Kon Ichikawa, Japan), The Decathlon (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia), The Losers (Claude Lelouch, France) and The Longest (John Schlesinger, UK). It was released on video by Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment.

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