ABSTRACT
A couple of months before the start of London 2012, film critic Cath Clarke of Time Out London magazine (2012) rather cynically warned: “There’ll be no dark corners in which to hide from the Olympics this summer – and that includes cinemas. A crowd of sports-themed films are loitering knock-kneed at the starting line”. While this prediction was something of an exaggeration with regard to the release of sport films (see Poulton and Roderick, 2009), London 2012 did inspire a handful of notable film-related projects. For in addition to the official film traditionally commissioned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to document the 30th Olympic Games, numerous other film productions, workshops and festivals also took place in the name of, or inspired by, the Olympic and Paralympic Games: whether as part of the official Cultural Olympiad or unofficially as part of the general ‘bandwagon jumping’ around London 2012.
