Hey folks, Harry here... An astonishing life has come to an end today. There has never been a more controversial filmmaker than Leni Riefenstahl. There is probably no greater film... hated so vehemently as her greatest filmed work.. TRIUMPH DES WILLENS (TRIUMPH OF THE WILL). At the time of its release, it was hailed all over the world as a towering achievement of art... After WWII, the embodiment of pure evil. She was vilified. HOWEVER... there is so much more to the life of Leni Riefenstahl than TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.
Many do not realize that Leni made a film against the evils of authoritarianism and the fascist world she saw around her. She shot this film in the midst of Nazi Germany, starred in it herself... She regretted TRIUMPH OF THE WILL and made a film to protest all that she felt had come to her country. She battled for 10 years after the war to try and finish the post prodcution on the film... but by that time she had been labeled Hitler's Whore by a world that thought they knew it all. Turns out, she did not have a romance with Hitler. However, the damage was done. TIEFLAND would never truly be seen with open eyes.
She wanted and sought to make one other film... PENTHISILEA, from the classic Greek mythology about the Amazon Warriors -- the thought of essentially a Wonder Woman movie by Leni Riefenstahl would have been astonishing. Alas - she was a marked woman.
What about who Leni was before the infamous TRIUMPH OF THE WILL... What about the absolutely brilliant OLYMPIA? A film that captured the very essence and spirit of what the Olympics mean. One of the most amazingly beautiful atheletic films ever shot. Her images capture the essence of a Deco Universe filled with chiseled bodies filled with power. She captured Jesse Owens at the peak of his own triumph of the will... the will to defy all others and win.
Before that... she was one of the most beautiful actresses in the halls of UFA. She was an actress under the direction of the brilliant Alexander Korda (director of THIEF OF BAGDAD) and Arnold Fanck (director of brilliant mountain films that put Renny Harlin to shame) and ultimately herself. The films ranged from astonishing beauty and majesty to peril inducing. Essentially in many ways, this period of film had Leni as a bit of an action star... she was climbing mountains free-climbing fashion... taking giant ski jumps that you wouldn't ever dare do. She was really quite something.
After World War 2, Leni continued her passion for film, but due to funding issues, she went into still photogaphy to a larger degree... Underwater and in far off places. She spent 15 years living in the Sudan with the Nuba tribes. Discovering who they were, capturing them on film. As you'll undoubtedly gather from many of the pictures here... she was capturing them with all the power she captured every other image in her life... a great sense of majesty. With her greatest film, it was perverted into a work to motivate masses into an unholy fervor for war. With the Nuba - her magnificent work instead documents a time and a people that no longer truly exist. The Nabu have come under attack via the terrible civil wars that have taken so many in the Sudan. At the age of 97, she went back... bringing aid and trying to find old friends to see if she could help... The civil war activity got so out of hand, she had to helicopter out... the copter wound up crashing and miraculously she survived.
Perhaps the best way to hear her story is through the 1993 film, THE WONDERFUL HORRIBLE LIFE OF LENI RIEFENSTAHL - no matter what... Leni Riefenstahl, to me, is the most important Female Director of all time. She captured images the likes of which awed and terrified at once. I often wonder, what would have happened had she left Germany at the same time Alexander Korda and Fritz Lang did. Her film career as a director in the classic studio system would have been astonishing. However, the life she leaves behind today... it was astonishing.
Click Here to see Leni's Biography on her official home page!
