Riefenstahl Screened

Leni Riefenstahl is larger than life. From the lure of her persona as it enters our homes via television to our pleasure in the recognition of her film images at rock concerts, to her place as part of the history of the Nazi period, Riefenstahl lives on in our imagination and in our cultural productions. Thus, the editors' introduction to this volume examines the manner in which Riefenstahl 'haunts' debates on aesthetics and politics, and how her legacy reverberates in the contemporary cultural scene. The editors view the collection as a three-part framework. The essays in the opening section of the book show that Riefenstahl is still very much alive and well - and controversial - in popular culture. Her films continue to determine the way in which we think about the Nazi period, providing instantly recognizable images and messages that often go unquestioned. We cannot separate these phenomena from Riefenstahl's years of avid self-fashioning. The second section of the book offers treatments of the shifting, mobile relationship between Riefenstahl's stubborn attempts to create and control her personae and her reactions to others' re-appropriations of the meanings of her life and work. Reading the texts and discourses surrounding 'Riefenstahl,' these scholars treat her memoirs - and her repeated assertions about herself - as a springboard into understanding anew how we might approach her films in a productive way. The closing section of the volume comprises essays that go right to the heart of the matter: Riefenstahl's films and photography. The new contexts-theoretical discussions and emerging discourses that animate these essays-include Scarry's treatise on beauty, justice and the global, the problems of history and memory, the place of Riefenstahl's filmmaking technique in contemporary cinema, and her appropriation of German musical traditions. Fueled by the work of a diverse range of scholars, then, Riefenstahl Screened offers an opportunity to rethink the place of Leni Riefenstahl and her work in contemporary culture and in academic discourse. It insists upon a critical self-examination that maps a topography of how scholars and teachers avail themselves of Riefenstahl's corpus.

Leni Riefenstahl, now aged 101, achieved fame as a dancer, actress photographer, and director, but her entire career is colored by her association with the Nazi party. This overt tension between the political meaning of her work for National Socialism and its essential aesthetic quality forms the basis of the compelling account. Appointed by Hitler, Leni Riefenstahl directed the Nazi propaganda film Triumph des Willens along with her bestknown work Olympia, a documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. By 1939 Riefenstahl was arguably the most famous women film director in the world; yet, after World War II, she was never again accepted as a filmmaker. Rainer Rother's book is a remarkable account of the fascinating life and work of Germany's most controversial photographer and filmmaker.

With access to Leni Riefenstahl's personal archives and film collection, the author explores the contraversial filmmaker's career.

Leni Riefenstahl will always be remembered for her brilliant film of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin - still rated as one of the best documentaries ever made. Before that she was acclaimed for her roles in silent feature films, when German cinema was in its artistic heyday in the 1920s. She pioneered the box office success of such classic mountaineering dramas as The White Hell of Piz Palu and then began to direct her own films. The Blue Light was admired by Hitler and led to her filming the Wagnerian Nuremberg Rally of 1934. 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. Her undoubted charisma led to many affairs and grandiose schemes - deep sea diving in her seventies and still filming wildlife in her nineties. Audrey Salkeld has sifted the fact from the legend and gives us a moving portrait of the great movie `star' who suffered more in the `wilderness' than her enduring fame suggests.

Biography of filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

German Culture through Film: An Introduction to German Cinema is an English-language text that serves equally well in courses on modern German film, in courses on general film studies, in courses that incorporate film as a way to study culture, and as an engaging resource for scholars, students, and devotees of cinema and film history. In its second edition, German Culture through Film expands on the first edition, providing additional chapters with context for understanding the era in which the featured films were produced. Thirty-three notable German films are arranged in seven chronological chapters, spanning key moments in German film history, from the silent era to the present. Each chapter begins with an introduction that focuses on the history and culture surrounding films of the relevant period. Sections within chapters are each devoted to one particular film, providing film credits, a summary of the story, background information, an evaluation, questions and activities to encourage diverse interpretations, a list of related films, and bibliographical information on the films discussed.

Leni Riefenstahl is best known as director of Triumph of the Will, a film of a Nazi Party Rally, and Olympia, the classic account of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In this memoir, the author finally discusses her motivations, her history, her important friendships, and, most of all, her art. 40 pages of black-and-white photos.