Riefenstahl, Leni (Berta Helene Amalie Riefenstahl) (lā`nē rē`fənshtäl', bĕr`tə hālā`nə ämäl`yə), 1902–2003, German filmmaker, b. Berlin. A dancer and actress, she was began directing her own films in 1932. Her Triumph of the Will (1935) documented a huge Nazi rally at Nuremberg using such innovative techniques as moving cameras, telephoto lenses, and unusual camera angles to produce startling black-and-white footage with wide panoramas and striking closeups, thus dramatizing and glamorizing the ritualistic political event. The film brought her widespread attention as well as Hitler's favor, and she was commissioned to film the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Olympia, 1938). The latter film has been hailed for its lyrical technique. Riefenstahl's connections with the Nazis led to her being blacklisted after 1945. Her later film and photographic work includes underwater pictures and studies of Africa.

Bibliography

See her memoir (1995); biographies by G. B. Infield (1976) and T. Leeflang (1991); study by C. C. Graham (1986); A. Taschen, Leni Riefenstahl: Five Lives (2000); R. Müller, dir., The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (film, 1993).

Riefenstahl, Leni

orig. Berta Helene Amalie Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl, 1938.

(credit: Courtesy of Deutsches Institut fur Filmkunde, Wiesbaden, Ger.)

(born Aug. 22, 1902, Berlin, Ger.—died Sept. 8, 2003, Pöcking) German film director and photographer. In the 1920s she was a dancer and actress in German nature films. After forming a production company, she made and starred in the mystical The Blue Light (1932). For Adolf Hitler she directed the propaganda film Triumph of the Will (1935), a documentary glorifying the 1934 Nürnberg rally. She was praised for the technical brilliance of Olympia (1938), her documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Detained by Allied forces after World War II, she was eventually cleared of complicity in Nazi war crimes, but her film career never recovered, and she worked principally as a photographer thereafter.