Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl is a truly remarkable woman. Born in 1902 she started off her career as a dancer. Sadly a knee injure put a stop to that success, in the next few years she acted in movies like Der heilige Berg (1926) and Das blaue Licht (1932).

But it was as a film producer and director she is most known as. Her documentary "Thriumph des Willens" earned her a gold medal on Venice 1936 and a gold medal at the world exhibition in Paris 1937.

Her film Olympia part one and two - Fest der Volker and Fest der Schoheit earned a gold medal in Paris 1937, a gold medal in Venice as the world's best film 1938 and the Olympic award "IOC" in 1939. In 1956 it was classified as one of the world's ten best film.

After the war she turned to photography, between 1962 and 1977 she went to Africa to document the Nuba tribes in Sudan, which at the times was extremely difficult for a white woman, to do due to the unstable situation in the country. Her work was published in world known magazines like Newsweek and The Sunday times magazine. She gained allot of awards for her two books "The Nuba" and "The Nuba of Kau".

Due to the civil war she was unable to visit Nuba again until February 2000 at an age of 97 (!). New fights broke out and Leni together with her team had to fly out of Sudan in a helicopter. The helicopter crashed - luckily no one was killed, but Lenis ribs where cracked and had damaged her lungs so she was flown to Germany - but she still have plans to return to Nuba.

Sadly most of the world cannot see the fact that Leni is an outstanding filmmaker - the only thing the see is that she worked with Hitler. Even through she denies ever being Anti-Semitism, and that she never knew what was going on, her past has hounted her career.

In 1938 when she was on her US tour, she found out that her so-thought loyal companion was not so loyal - in fact he was spying and sabotaging.

Many studios boycotted her faring bad press. But after allot of struggle she succeeded in arranging privet screening of Olympia for around 50 press people. Despite the boycott and rumors that it was a propaganda film, the press reviews were enthusiastic.

After the war, Leni had to faces charges, she was arrested and managed to escape at several times and was imprisoned for three years in a detention camp and had to undergo a denazification. Even today Leni is still harassed, National graphic refuses to publish any of her work and when she has had Exhibitions there has sometimes been boycotted both by fellow artist and the public.

Natasha, Sweden