Immagini e narrazione nelle inaugurazioni dei giochi olimpici dal 1936 ad oggi

The study examines the relationship between history and the media, starting from the reflections produced by the international conference Making history with television. The image as source, event, memory, organized in April 2004 at the Catholic University of Milan. The methodology adopted considers the audiovisual sources as direct testimonies of their time, useful for a complete vision of the history of the twentieth century and in particular for the one closest to our days. Through the mega event par excellence, that is the Olympic Games, the strategies implemented by the host countries to build their official image, both on the political and socio-cultural side, are analyzed. The study also traces the origins of the contemporary image of the Olympic Games, through the Berlin 1936 and Beijing 2008 editions. The data of the two editions are collected in cards (accompanied by slides taken from the Olympic video-documentaries) that follow the classification made by Essex and Chalkley, which proposes a distinction between low, medium and high impact games where there is a profound modification of the urban environment.