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Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl is most widely known as the director of "Triumph Of The Will", the propaganda documentary of a major Nazi rally,and "Olympiad", the propaganda documentary of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. For this reason, she is often not accorded the respect she deserves as a filmaker. How, among all the filmakers in Germany at the time, did she, a woman in a man's business, get picked by Adolf Hitler himself as the official director of the most important political documentaries the world had ever seen? For an answer, try watching "The Blue Light", her first successful film as a director (Silver medal winner at the 1932 Venice Biennale, it also stayed in London's prestigious Rialto theatre for 15 months)and you'll find out. She also acts in it, wonderfully. Beautiful, talented, but forever a pariah in the eyes of a mainstream willing to rip off ideas with one hand and slap their creator with the other, Leni Riefenstahl has created a body of work worth seeing.
Please note that I have chosen copies with subtitles as opposed to voice overs. This is because I have always believed that a major part of an actor/orator's skill is speaking, and voiceovers turn the best work into cardboard. If you're too lazy to read subtitles, you're too stupid to understand the subtleties of the films anyway.
Triumph Of The Will was far more than a work of propaganda. It had to be far more than that in order to be effective. Leni Riefenstahl, in both of her Nazi documentaries, laid alot of the ground rules for documenting on film any large scale event. Both by focusing on the grandeur of the event itself, and the individuals participating. She was original in her use of crane shots, now standard in almost every film. Any live concert film, large crowd scene, etc. owes a certain debt to Leni Riefenstahl.

Leni Riefenstahl, A Memoir
The Blue Light, directed and produced by Leni Riefenstahl
The Olympiad: Part 1.
The Olympiad: Part 2.
The Triumph Of The Will

Leni Riefenstahl links:
Internet Resources Leni Riefenstahl page
A Biography of Leni Riefenstahl.
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