Source: Radio New Zealand
Table tennis and film have a surprisingly entangled history. Both depended on the invention of celluloid – which not only became the substrate of film, but is also used to make ping pong balls.
Following a brief ping pong craze in 1902, the game largely disappeared and was widely assumed to have been a passing fad. More than 20 years later, however, the British socialite, communist spy and filmmaker Ivor Montagu went to great lengths to establish the game as a sport – a story I explore in my current book project on ping pong and the moving image.
He founded the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) and codified the rules of the game in both a book and a corresponding short film, Table Tennis Today (1929).
Timothee Chalamet makes it hard not to laugh at Marty Mauser’s wildly offensive claims and believable conviction.
Central Pictures / A24
