Leni Riefenstahl
1902 – 2003 German filmmaker, actress
German filmmaker whose technically inventive Nazi propaganda films made her one of the most controversial figures in cinema.
Leni Riefenstahl was a German director whose 1935 film Triumph of the Will, a record of a Nazi party rally, and her Olympia films of the 1936 Berlin Games used sweeping camera work and editing that influenced later filmmaking. The same films served Hitler's regime as propaganda, staging Nazism as spectacle. After the war she was investigated and faced lasting condemnation for her role, and she spent decades insisting she had been an artist rather than a propagandist, a claim widely rejected.
Connections
- associate of Joseph Goebbels — Worked within the Nazi regime whose propaganda ministry Goebbels ran, though the two clashed.
- associate of Joseph Goebbels — Worked within the same regime as its propaganda filmmaker, though the two clashed.
In the timeline
- 1935 Triumph of the Will director
- 1936 The Berlin Olympics become a Nazi propaganda showcase mentioned
- 1936 1936 Berlin Olympics opening ceremony mentioned