As the country celebrates the 108th birth anniversary of hockey wizard Dhyan Chand, his son, Ashok Kumar, Thursday launched a hunt to get back the entire video of the historic 1936 Berlin Olympic final between India and Germany.
While some three minutes of the video have gone viral, Ashok wants to retrieve the whole film that was captured by noted German filmmaker German Leni Riefenstahl.
It was India's third successive hockey gold in Berlin, outclassing hosts Germany 8-1 in the final that was held on Aug 15. Skipper Dhyan Chand dazzled with three goals.
"I am trying to present that historic match to the nation. Generally, we have seen only a few moments of Dhyan Chand’s matches through different websites. But now I got to know that an entire video of the match is available in Germany and am trying to get it back,” said Ashok, who scored the winning goal for India in the 1975 World Cup final against Pakistan in Kuala Lumpur.
Leni also produced a well-documented film on the Berlin Olympics, named "Olympia", after being asked by Adolf Hitler. It is two-part documentary with versions in German, French and English. The documentary also also a famous footage of Jesse Owens’ record-breaking 100-metre run.
Ashok said one of his friend, while doing research on Dhyan Chand, found out about the existence of the film on the hockey wizard.
“My friend Hemant Dubey, while doing research on Dhyan Chand, recently found out that the German lady had filmed the entire hockey final... but only a part of the film was used for her documentary. We believe that her family is still having the footage,” said Ashok.