Ancient Olympics: Let the Games Begin (2004)
• January 1st, 2004 • 0h 52min
Documentary, History
Overview
Come back with us to Ancient Greece, 2,500 Years ago to the original Olympic Games. The ancient Games, like our modern Olympics, included champions and cheaters, glory and scandals, bitter rivalries and contests of strength, speed and savage combat. Set in 448 BC when the pounding of horse's hooves and the brutal hand-to-hand combat could be heard and seen by the crowds that filled the Olympic stadium. This one-hour special event follows the glory and corruption of the arc of a single, five-day Olympiad. The competitions include chariot racing, running, jumping, discus, javelin and two man-to-man combat finals-boxing and pankration, a form of extreme fighting in which death was not uncommon. With the help of sports historians and great athletes such as George Chuvalo and Olympic medallists Donovan Bailey and Angela Schneider, viewers travel back to a very different life-in a very different world.
Make sure to check your pop-up blocker!!
Trailer
Similar Movies
Ben-Hur
Released on: 1959-11-18
History, Drama, Adventure
In 26 AD, Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew in ancient Judea, opposes the occupying Roman empire. Falsely accuse...
Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations
Released on: 1938-04-21
Documentary
Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greec...
Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty
Released on: 1938-06-02
Documentary
Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave t...
Munich
Released on: 2005-12-23
Drama, Action, History, Thriller
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a...
Chariots of Fire
Released on: 1981-05-15
Drama, History
In the class-obsessed and religiously divided UK of the early 1920s, two determined young runners tr...
Caligula
Released on: 1979-08-14
Drama, History
After the death of the paranoid emperor Tiberius, Caligula, his heir, seizes power and plunges the e...
FPS: First Person Shooter
Released on: 2023-06-01
Documentary
This documentary takes a game-by-game deep dive into the history and evolution of a genre that has g...
Die kalten Ringe
Released on: 2021-07-19
Documentary, TV Movie
19 years after the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan, the Olympic Games of 1964 took place in Tokyo....
Pompeii: Secrets of the Dead
Released on: 2019-11-24
Documentary
Forensic experts scan Pompeii’s victims to investigate why they didn’t escape the eruption.
Titus
Released on: 1999-12-25
Drama, History
Titus Andronicus returns from the wars and sees his sons and daughters taken from him, one by one. S...
Quo Vadis
Released on: 1951-11-08
Drama, History, Romance
After fierce Roman commander Marcus Vinicius becomes infatuated with beautiful Christian hostage Lyg...
Children of Glory
Released on: 2006-10-23
Drama, History
During the ill-fated Hungarian revolution of 1956, Karcsi Szabo, star player on the water polo team,...
The Degenerates
Released on: 1969-03-27
Comedy, Drama, History
A series of bawdy and satirical episodes written during the reign of the emperor Nero and set in imp...
Cleopatra
Released on: 1963-06-12
Drama, History, Romance
Determined to hold on to the throne, Cleopatra seduces the Roman emperor Julius Caesar. When Caesar ...
Olympia 1936. Der verratene Traum
Released on: 2016-08-05
Documentary
The film chronicles the story of how the Nazis and the IOC turned, to their mutual benefit, a small ...
Tenório and the Dreams of Judo
Released on: 2021-07-08
Documentary
Antônio Tenório and the Brazilian Paralympic Team are invited to a rare training camp in Japan. Pass...
The Road to the Tokyo Olympics
Released on: 1963-02-08
Documentary
A documentary film that includes footage of past Olympics held in different countries with an partic...
