In 2011 Thailand tied for 1st place in the Cheerleading World Championships. They are the first international team to hold this title. Unfortunately due to a national disaster in Thailand, the team will not be able to defend their championship on 4/26/2012. See what it takes to be the World Champion.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

You can watch the entire documentary online for $8.

Thanks Monica.

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The much anticipated movie for the American Girl doll of the year, who just happens to be a gymnast, An American Girl: McKenna Shoots for the Stars will be out this summer – specifically July 14 at 8pm on NBC right before the Olympics and then it will be available on DVD in late July. …

And Olympic legend, Cathy Rigby, stars as McKenna’s coach.

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First Position recently had its World Premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and was named the audience choice’s first runner up for Best Documentary.

Click PLAY or watch a Trailer on YouTube.

First Position is in theatres May 4th, 2012.

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Classic Hollywood. Classic Cirque du Soleil.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

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Workout: A Documentary … examines the formation of the Blue Mound Gymnastics Club in the early 1960′s in Blue Mound, Illinois.

The back bone of the film is the exceptional gymnastic career of the filmmaker’s sister, Hali Sheriff and the dynamic driving force of his mother/ gymnastics coach, Ginny Sheriff.

… While returning from a gymnastics exhibition in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1966, both Hali and her mother were killed in a tragic plane crash along with Hali’s father, the Reverend Harold Sheriff, who was piloting the plane. Paul was ten years old.

Juxtaposed with this will be the filmmaker’s current life 42 years later. Through video diary, archive footage, and location interviews, the film will explore the effects and influence of this traumatic event on the filmmaker and immediate surviving members of the family, teammates and friends. Within this framework, the film also thematically treats and critically examines loss, and the changing roles and relationships within the family unit. The documentary also addresses athletic competition as a philosophy of life, with its effects on the individual athlete. …

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

To find out more, go to the YouTube page comments. Or to the official website. Paul is still trying to raise funds to complete the planned documentary.

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Though they make the most consistently excellent animated films, Pixar is often criticized for a bias towards male characters.

Perhaps that’s starting to change.

… Pixar has a forthcoming full-length movie, Brave, about a Scottish warrior-princess. It was slated to be directed by Brenda Chapman (Pixar’s first female director), then was replaced by Mark Andrews, with Chapman as co-director. …

Pixar’s gender gap

Click PLAY or watch the trailer YouTube.

related – The Fall of the Female Protagonist in Kids’ Movies

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Brutally realistic. It’s hard to become an Olympian. Fun to be one.

… follows the British girls hoping for a place on the gymnastics team that went to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike. (30min)

part 2 (30min)
part 3 (30min)

Marissa King was 2011 NCAA Vault champion.

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…‘Cold Warrior’.

“A young gymnast questions her dreams of Olympic glory when she discovers she’s part of a shady government plot to win at any cost.”

Written and directed by Emily Greenwood. …

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

It looks hilariously cliché to me. But there is one theme that may be of interest to coaches.

… The film addresses the grim topic of abortion doping, a practice rumored to have been used by Romanian and Soviet coaches during the 1970s and 1980s to improve the athletic performance of gymnasts. …

Double Front – Cold Warrior Movie Trailer

Click through for more on that film. And for another link on abortion doping.

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That’s George, top of the pyramid.

Sheen TA Gymnastics Club (1934)

George Weedon, now 91, is the subject of a short film, Walk Tall, by Leytonstone animator Kate Sullivan which is having its premiere. …

In 1948 he came 28th out of 140 contenders and went on to compete again in Helsinki four years later. …

details on London Evening Standard

George introduced “the splits” to domestic men’s gymnastics in England. Officials tried to ban the “ladies’ movement“.

He recalls that the London organization “was a right shambles.”

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Final Destination 5 is a 2011 3D horror film …

The gymnastic set piece has been praised as “anxiety-filled”, “a beautiful example of successful comic suspense”, “Hitchcockian edge-of-your-seat suspense”, and “inventively grotesque”. …

I wouldn’t go that far. But it is slightly more realistic than Make It or Break It. (renewed for another season)

Will Emily Kmetko come back to training with a baby !?

Click PLAY or watch the movie clip on YouTube. (stop at 4min to avoid the death on Beam)

Candice, is played by actress Ellen Wroe, a former gymnast for Crenshaws. She did much of that footage herself.

One of the stunt doubles is Canadian gymnast Brittany Rogers.

(Link via Tim O’Donovan)

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