Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl was born Helene Amalia Bertha Riefenstahl in Berlin on August 22, 1902. Her father was Alfred Riefenstahl, the owner of a heating system store. In 1918, without her father’s permission, Riefenstahl began to study dance, but after her father threatened to send Riefenstahl to boarding school, she switched her studies to painting. But despite her attempts to abide by her father’s wishes, Alfred sent his daughter to boarding school a year later anyway. Upon her return to Berlin, Riefenstahl’s father finally agreed to let her pursue a dancing career and on October 23, 1923, Riefenstahl held her first solo performance in Munich. Unfortunately, just as her success as a dancer began, Riefenstahl started to have problems with her knee. Luckily, around this same time she saw Arnold Fanck’s newest film Der Berg des Schicksals (The Mountain of Destiny, 1924) and her career aspirations changed. Later that year the two of them met and he asked Riefenstahl to star in his next film Der heilige Berg (The Holy Mountain, 1926). Fanck worked with Riefenstahl in his next several films and although she primarily acted, her fascination with the technical work was increasing. Through her close work with Fanck, his cinematographers and the other German directors she was meeting, Riefenstahl became familiar with the camera and other aspects of film production. In 1931 she finished writing the first version of the screenplay to her first film, Das blaue Licht (The Blue Light), which premiered the following year and began her career as a director.
In 1932, Riefenstahl attended a speech held by Adolf Hitler and wrote him two months later expressing her desire to meet him, which she did the following year. That same year Riefenstahl began work on a short documentary film on a Nuremburg rally, Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of the Faith, 1933), which impressed Hitler so much that he requested she produce another, longer documentary on the 1934 Nazi rally in Nuremburg. Riefenstahl refused at first, suggesting another director, but later agreed and released her most famous film, Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), in 1935.
1 | 2 | next >>