| leni riefenstahl is one of the most controversial artists of the 20th century. a portrait of a dancer, actress, photographer and filmmaker....................... | ||||||
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| leni riefenstahl (98) | ||||||
designboom met leni riefenstahl on the 19th of october 2000, at the presentation of her book 'five lives', during the international book fair in frankfurt.
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 it's impossible to consider riefenstahl's career in normal terms, since politics and history have inundated it from every side. in the following portrait we plan to focus on the artist leni riefenstahl. we aren’t going to “embellish” a dramatic period of human history, nor underestimate the effect that her opera had in the hands of the third reich. at the press conference, no journalists asked her about her artwork. the main interest was focused on her relationship to the nazi party, her infamous propaganda efforts for the third reich and on the american filmmaker jodie foster’s plan to develop a film about leni riefenstahl and starring herself as leni.... -------------------------------------------------- designboom asked leni riefenstahl: 'describe your style, like a good friend of your's would describe it'. leni riefenstahl: 'I prefer beautiful things and people, I do not enjoy photographing ill people, not because I don't like them as individuals, but I think that beautiful people can give joy to everybody. this is what I want to do, give pleasure to people. when I say I only photograph beautiful people, everybody gets upset about this, but michelangelo and raffaello did this, they portrayed beautiful figures from their historical period in order to define 'beauty'. when I watch 'olympia' or look at the photos, what have I done is this: I didn’t change them, they are who they are, but I saw them from a different angle, I took my pictures from a very high or very low point of view. when I saw an athlete with a 'nervous background', I changed my position in order to eliminate everything redundant, not important. I focussed only on the subject, I enclosed it, that way everything else was blurry, and disappeared...this gave it emphasis. and I did this with people, animals, plants , this is my style...'  -------------------------------------------------- --- who is leni riefenstahl? she was a celebrated dancer in berlin during the twenties, between 1925 and 1933 she became famous as an actress in the 'mountain films' of arnold fanck. she conquered the male world of directing and has influenced the aesthetics of film and photography as few others have done. her contributions to the art and technique of filmmaking were vast, and her most important film, 'olympia' (1938), is still rated one of the ten best film documentaries ever made. before that she was acclaimed for her film 'triumph of will', one of the most effective propaganda films of the third reich. despite her denial of propagandist elements in her films and of her political involvement with the nazis (she never was a member of the nazi party), she has spent most of her life trying to live down her association with hitler. her strong charisma led to many affairs, and rumours persist that she and hitler were lovers, and that jealous goebbels did his best to sabotage her endeavours. after the war she was shunned by the film industry, despite a court in 1952 proclaiming her not guilty of supporting the nazis in a punishable way. she was, however, labeled as a sympathizer, a stigma that she has never able to overcome. in the 1960s and 70s she traveled to africa and photographed east africa and the nuba tribes in sudan extensively. at the age of 71, she began a new chapter of her life as an underwater photographer - deep sea diving in her seventies and still filming wildlife in the maldives in her nineties. today, at the age of 98, leni riefenstahl lives near munich and is still working on various film and exhibition projects. ---  biography and works of leni riefenstahl |
 leni riefenstahl, actress in 'storm over the mont blanc', 1930 courtesy taschen © leni riefenstahl  leni riefenstahl (during the filming of 'olympia') with her cameraman walter frentz, 1936 courtesy taschen © leni riefenstahl  leni riefenstahl as director during the filming of 'tiefland', 1940 courtesy taschen © leni riefenstahl  leni riefenstahl and the nuba courtesy taschen © leni riefenstahl  leni riefenstahl as a diver, 1980 courtesy taschen © leni riefenstahl |
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