"What is perhaps most striking about Leni Riefenstahl is that by now, more people may have seen films about her than have sat through her actual films. There have been no fewer than six documentaries to date, quite aside from the countless cameos in other documentaries and films about the Third Reich. She has been valorized and vilified in equal measure throughout her life."
"Andres Veiel's Riefenstahl, which screened in Germany last year and is appearing in select U.S. cinemas this fall, clearly sets out to be the final word on Hitler's personal filmmaker. In combining footage from an infamous film career as the girl genius of Nazi propaganda and her post-war media confrontations with it, Veiel has a distinct advantage over those who came before him: Leni Riefenstahl is dead."
"Riefenstahl held a unique place on an exalted stage until her death in 2003, photographing Mick and Bianca Jagger for The Sunday Times as well as Siegfried and Roy in Las Vegas. She was hailed as a seminal aesthetic and technical influence by such luminaries as Andy Warhol, Quentin Tarantino and Madonna. As the Nazis rose to power in the early 1930s, Riefenstahl was young, directing and starring in Alpine adventure films before she found her muse in Adolf Hitler."
Leni Riefenstahl became internationally known for films that crafted Hitler's image and depicted mass party rallies and torchlight marches, including Triumph of the Will and Olympia about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Both films won top prizes at the Venice Film Festival. She later photographed celebrities such as Mick and Bianca Jagger and Siegfried and Roy. Andres Veiel premiered a documentary combining career footage and postwar media confrontations, screened in Germany and shown in select U.S. cinemas. Riefenstahl faced brief house arrest and four denazification trials but was never formally convicted of complicity and was labeled a Mitläufer (fellow traveler).
Read at www.npr.org
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