Abstract
The purpose of this article is to analyse Jens Lind's hour-long documentary film The Sunshine Olympics 1912 from a mythical-religious perspective, and show its underlying myth of creation. This perspective is inspired by Mircea Eliade's theory of myth and the sacred, as it can be found in his work on religious phenomenology and the history of religions. The article shows how the related meanings – homologies – occur at different levels of the story. Through Lind's use of voice-over narration, narrative structure, personal focus, visual metaphors and various recurring motifs, existential meanings are generated at different levels from an individual to a cosmological dimension. In accordance with Eliade's theories, the three main athletes depicted in the documentary, Greta Johansson, Jim Thorpe, and Kenneth McArthur, become exemplary models of the Olympic spirit. Three Olympic creators are also presented in the film: Pierre de Coubertin, Viktor Balck, and Torben Grut.
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