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Leni Riefenstahl in the News

Archive for 2006
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Triumph des Willens
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December, 2006

December 28, 2007

  • Calgary Sun: Standing ovations

    Quote: "The world premiere of Edmonton playwright Mieko Ouchi's The Blue Light gave a glimpse of Leni Riefenstahl, the director whose documentaries on Nazi Germany made her one of the most controversial filmmakers of the 20th century."

December 12, 2006

  • Turkish Daily News: Mountain film fest in Beyoglu

    Quote: "On the second and third days of the festival, further films spanning over 70 years of history will be screened. The most striking among them is Storm over Mont Blanc, directed by Arnold Fanck, the originator of the mountain film genre, in 1930. Leni Riefenstahl, one of the most controversial artists of the 20th century, plays the starring role in the film."

  • Gawker: We Knew Brit's New Boyfriend Reminded Us of Someone!

    Quote: "We just didn't know it was Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl (seriously, she wasn't in New Kids on the Block, like, at all)."

December 10, 2006

  • Independent: Christmas Books Special: Cinema

    Quote: "Taschen's era-defining series on cinema, edited by Jurgen Muller, has now reached the 1930s with Movies of the 30s (£19.99). Muller includes key European offerings from directors like Ozu and Vigo as well as the Hollywood hits, and the photography comes as a revelation, because so much of it feels previously unseen. These earlier volumes work especially well because most of their films were monochrome, and the stills are luminously intense. To see Garbo and Dietrich here is to understand what made them legends, and it's intriguing to see a photo spread for H G Wells' Things to Come laid next to Leni Riefenstahl's Nietzschean shots from Olympia."

November, 2006

November 13, 2006

  • Lafayette Journal & Courier: Nazi propoganda film stirs questions for today

    Quote: "Why is the film [Triumph of the Will] interesting and important today? Visually, verbally and acoustically it reveals principles and themes of Nazism. It also shows how participants and viewers are willed beyond mere acceptance to submission and to action. It also prods us to ask ourselves if we recognize parallels in contemporary forms of fascism."

November 12, 2006

  • Buffalo News: Editor's Choice

    Quote: "[Walt] Disney — until this book's thorough and vehemently scrupulous examination — was one of Hollywood's most open arch-conservatives and not-so-whispered anti-Semites. Gabler, typically, can only find him to be an unfortunate and naive fellow traveler of Hollywood's most unfortunate bigots and right-wing zealots (Disney let Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl visit his studios, says Gabler, as much out of naivete and ignorance as anything else.)"

November 9, 2006

  • RIA Novosti: The end of a chapter in European history: the death of Mischa Wolf

    Quote: "Germany's 20th-century history has numerous examples of intellectual elites with dramatic lives. Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass enthusiastically joined the SS. Leni Riefenstahl, an outstanding film director, so skillfully praised Nazism in her films that they are still perceived as masterpieces. Friedrich Wolf and his son Mischa joined the other, antifascist camp. Which of these figures is dearer to their motherland's history now? Or should we stop throwing stones when it is time to gather them?"

November 7, 2006

November 2, 2006

October, 2006

October 28, 2006

  • ABC News: Political Campaigns Through Photos — A Still Image Can Change Political Fortunes

    Quote: "On election eve in 1968, I witnessed a remarkable sight. Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon had just touched down at an airbase in Orange County, Calif. The sun had set in the western sky, and as Nixon emerged from the United charter to come home to vote, the sound of massed bands filled the air, playing Ruffles and Flourishes. From a stadium at the edge of the tarmac, hundreds of cheerleaders formed an aisle to the bottom of the ramp at planeside. They all held flaming torches, leading to the entrance to the stadium that had been built for the event. Nixon walked down the corridor to a stage, where none other than John Wayne was waiting to greet him for his last rally of the campaign. This spectacle was the brainchild of a senior Nixon advance man, Tim Elbourne. Several weeks earlier I had entertained him at my apartment in New York during a campaign stop. I had a 16mm print of Leni Riefenstahl's famous documentary, Triumph of the Will, which had been filmed during the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg in 1934 that consolidated Adolph Hitler's rise to power. As I turned off the projector, I saw a weird light appear in Elbourne's eyes. As we were landing in Orange County he told me, 'You're about to get a big surprise.' "

October 26, 2006

  • Hellenic News of America: Contribution and Sacrifice of the Hellenic Navy and the Greek Merchant Marine in the Allied Effort Against the Axis During W.W. II, 1939-45

    Quote: "The contribution of Greece in the WW II allied effort, as asserted by Hitler, was as follows: 'The entrance of Italy into the war proved catastrophic for us. Had the Italians not attacked Greece and had they not needed our help, the war would have taken a different course. We would have had the time to capture Leningrad and Moscow, before the Russian cold weather had set in.' Hitler uttered words to this effect on March 30, 1944 to his guest and trusted friend Leni Riefenstahl, the world famous film director, as she writes in her autobiography."

October 25, 2006

October 23, 2006

October 18, 2006

  • Portland Mercury: Theatre

    Quote: "Insight Out examines the relationship between art and responsibility by way of the ever-fascinating Leni Riefenstahl, who made propaganda films for the Nazi Party."

October 15, 2006

  • Jewish Review: Calendar of Events

    Quote: "Leni. Play about acclaimed filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl, whose life work includes the most effective piece of Nazi propoganda ever made."

October 11, 2006

September, 2006

September 20, 2006

  • Miami Poetry Review: 10 Films That Were A Threat To National Security

    Quote: "This propaganda film by Leni Riefenstahl was actually quite innovative in cinematic technique and is unofficially known as the greatest propaganda film in history."

September 18, 2006

  • Aspen Daily News: GrassRoots TV should use better judgment

    Quote: "For example, would [GrassRoots TV] air the movie made by Nazi propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will? [...] Riefenstahl filmed vermin running out of sewers for her Nazi collaborators' voice-overs; they related the vermin to the Jewish 'infestation' in Germany. She edited the film herself."
    Note: The author of this letter-to-the-editor has clearly — perhaps intentionally? — confused Riefenstahl's 1935 film, Triumph of the Will, with Veit Harlan's 1940 film, Jud Süß.

September 13, 2006

  • Associated Content: Leni Riefenstahl: America's Sweetheart and the Nazi's Greatest Filmmaker

    Quote: "To make the claims that she was simply ignorant of what was really happening is disturbing. We as the audience can dismiss her character as disgusting and wrong but does that discredit her talent? I believe we can take a page out of Riefenstahl's book and pretend to be ignorant and watch to learn style and technique, as long as we forget the messages of the film, the director who made them, and what they really stand for. In the end, Riefenstahl is not going to be remembered as a filmmaker because she willingly made propaganda (after her stint as an actress), not films."

September 8, 2006

  • King County Journal: Exhibit showcases WWII propaganda

    Quote: "On Dec. 9, the [White River Valley Museum] will screen two of the most influential propaganda films of all time: Frank Capra's Prelude to War and Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will."

  • Oregonian: Theater other shows

    Quote: "Written and directed by Sarah Greenman, Leni considers Leni Riefenstahl and asks, 'Can a single piece of art be so dangerous?' "

September 7, 2006

  • Hub: Is Jodie Foster going to make a Riefenstahl movie?

    Quote: "For a comment on the project's status, I went to Foster's publicist, Jennifer Allen, who delivered this response from her client: 'The Leni Riefenstahl script is still being developed. We are currently looking for a director to enter into this process. There is no start date or studio involvement as yet.' "

  • Minnesota Daily: Obsessing over perception, the power of propaganda

    Quote: "In the 1930s, German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl directed influential propaganda documentaries commissioned by and valorizing the Nazi party. The most famous of her films, Triumph of the Will, received widespread acclaim in Europe as well as landmark recognition in cinema's history, while remaining largely banned in America."

  • PopMatters: 9/11's impact on pop culture has been wide, but not deep

    Quote: " 'To acknowledge the beauty of photographs of the World Trade Center ruins in the months following the attack seemed frivolous, sacrilegious,' essayist Susan Sontag noted in her book Regarding the Pain of Others. Sontag had once written that the Nazi propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl — Olympia and Triumph of the Will — were so stylistically brilliant that, despite their glorification of Adolf Hitler's death machine, they were beyond censure. Here she seemed to be making the same point about the terrorists' handiwork: 'The most people dared say was that the photographs were "surreal," a hectic euphemism behind which the disgraced notion of beauty cowered.' "

September 6, 2006

  • World Socialist Web Site: Hitler's favourite sculptor: New exhibition displays the work of Arno Breker

    Quote: "[...] the Schwerin catalogue quotes American art critic Phyllis Tuchman, who praised Breker's work in the pages of Art in America: 'This show of bronzes by Arno Breker and nine of his contemporaries ... filled a significant gap in the history of 20th century art and provided a rare opportunity to assess the merits of this maligned German period. Breker stole the show ... He turned out to be a four star, albeit conservative, talent, as gifted in his field as filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was in hers.' "

September 1, 2006

  • Taipei Times: Saints and sinners of extreme sports

    Quote: "The mountain movies that were popular in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, many starring Leni Riefenstahl and Luis Trenker, pointed a clear way out of the messy conflicts and confusions of the Weimar era. Unfortunately, however, they pointed to Hitler, who quickly appropriated the mountain imagery for his own propaganda ends."

August, 2006

August 29, 2006

August 25, 2006

  • Evening Bulletin: Mel Gibson And His Holocaust Denial Group

    Quote: "Likewise, the actress Jodie Foster called Gibson 'kind' and 'honest,' and 'absolutely not antisemitic.' There was, however, more than a touch of irony in her statements, since just last year, Foster also claimed, implausibly, that Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was not really a Nazi. No matter how much she admires Gibson or Riefenstahl, Foster needs to judge them according to their actual statements and actions, not according to her fantasy image of them."

August 22, 2006

  • Modesto Bee: [Modesto Junior College] Offers New Documentary Film Class

    Quote: "The course will introduce students to the history and theory of documentary films through the screening and discussion of selected works by the Lumiere brothers, Winsor McKay, Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Leni Riefenstahl, Errol Morris, Jacque Perrin, Michael Moore and Ken Burns."

August 21, 2006

  • U.S. Newswire: Jewish Groups Should Withdraw Invitations to Mel Gibson, in Response to News of His Ties to Holocaust-Deniers

    Quote: "Following Gibson's recent apology for his antisemitic outburst, a number of Hollywood personalities came to his defense. Ironically, one of Gibson's most ardent supporters was Jodie Foster, who said, 'Is he an anti-Semite? Absolutely not.' Yet just last year, Foster also claimed, implausibly, that Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl was not really a Nazi. 'No matter how much she admires Gibson or Riefenstahl, Ms. Foster needs to judge them according to their actual statements and actions, not according to her fantasy image of them,' Dr. Medoff said."

August 19, 2006

  • World Socialist Web Site: Günter Grass and the Waffen SS

    Quote: "Grass's membership in the Waffen SS remains an episode in his youth, for which he can hardly be reproached. It bears no comparison, for example, with the case of the conductor Herbert von Karajan, who in 1933, at the age of 25, joined the National Socialists twice (he joined both the German and the Austrian parties) — a move which was extremely profitable for his career. Not to speak of someone like the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who made propaganda films for the Nazi regime. She denied any responsibility up until her death three years ago, and is still celebrated as a major artist."

  • Toronto Star: Hard to get over writer's Nazi past — But past horrors don't negate Guenter Grass's genius

    Quote: "Ask Leni Riefenstahl, a brilliant filmmaker whose career was defined and forever shadowed by Triumph of the Will, a 1934 documentary about Hitler's Nuremberg rallies that dared acknowledge the aesthetic grandeur of the Nazi statement. In her 101 years, Riefenstahl never got away from Triumph because it was all about glorifying the Nazi regime, yet it's still shown in first-year film studies classes around the world and a potent source of debate. "

August 18, 2006

  • New York Times: On Sontag: Essayist as Metaphor and Muse

    Quote: "In 1965 Sontag argued that the stylistic brilliance of Riefenstahl's Nazi propaganda films lifted them beyond censure; she later revised that view."

August 9, 2006

  • Artvoice: The Buffalo Infringement Festival

    Quote: "It was not possible to attend every theater piece in the festival. Shows I did not see that nonetheless earned positive buzz included Queen Kong, which featured Dana Block as German film director Leni Riefenstahl and as the title character [...]"

August 5, 2006

  • New York Times: The Week Ahead: Aug. 6 - 12

    Quote: "This week the strange bedfellows at Kino take up residence at Anthology Film Archives, where a summer series devoted to the company wraps up its final week [...] The series ends Thursday with the most gripping monster movie in the Kino catalog besides Nosferatu: Ray Müller's flabbergasting account of The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. Giving the greatest performance of her life, Riefenstahl, the infamous director of Triumph of the Will marshals a beguiling, twisted persona to celebrate and defend her career. From her early stardom as an actress in Alpine adventure films through her creation of dazzling propaganda for the Third Reich, to her postwar interest in the Nubia tribe of Sudan and tropical fish, Riefenstahl's biography holds a terrible fascination. Mr. Müller is scrupulous in handling this volatile material, opting for an apparent objectivity that allows the subject to reveal herself, while couching its commentary in the choice of images and their sly arrangement."

August 2, 2006

  • New York Press: Sontag as Subject — Insights into some fine photography

    Quote: "Forty photographs in two rooms are juxtaposed with some of Sontag's eye-opening observations about photography [where] a riff on 'fascist dramaturgy' beside an arresting Leni Riefenstahl photo proves, politics aside, that the power of Sontag's public face was matched by her eyes."

  • Guardian Unlimited: Back to the futurists

    Quote: "The Germans, who have done far more soul-searching over their role in the second world war than the Italians, have nevertheless found it much easier to pardon artists tainted by nazism. Leni Riefenstahl is an outstanding case in point."

July, 2006

July 27, 2006

  • Guardian Unlimited: Raising the dead

    Quote: "Recently I watched Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will and realised something that shocked me. I'd seen those terrifying stills from her documentary of the Nuremberg Rally, in which rank on rank of identically saluting stormtroopers form a massed legion of death. But I never knew until I saw the film what they were doing: paying their collective respects at a memorial to German soldiers killed in the first world war."

July 20, 2006

  • Jewish Journal: Overcoming Germanophobia During the World Cup

    Quote: "In the '30s, [Nuremberg] was the place where Hitler displayed his might to the world, the scene of his most fervent rallies — the Nazi national shrine where filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl captured the frenzied Fuhrer in her 1934 propaganda movie, Triumph of the Will."

July 19, 2006

July 7, 2006

  • Financial Express: History could repeat itself at the Olympiastadion

    Quote: "Outside, the rebuilding project retained the strict symmetry of the original design and it remains eerily familiar from the Olympia documentary made by Leni Riefenstahl to celebrate the 1936 Games."

July 5, 2006

  • LA Weekly: A Face in the In Crowd

    Quote: "[Budd Schulberg] arrested Riefenstahl and brought her to Nuremberg. He was in his Navy uniform, so she didn't know he was a Hollywood guy, and she told a story of how she came to Hollywood and she was so well received, and he knew that she wasn't."

June, 2006

June 29, 2006

  • Vue Weekly: Sterlings Push the Envelopes to Award Local Theatre Talent

    Quote: "Despite seven nominations, including Outstanding New Work and Outstanding Production, Workshop West's version of Mieko Ouchi's The Blue Light, about the life and times of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, left empty-handed, as did Shadow Theatre's stirring production of Three Days of Rain and the Citadel's charming A Year With Frog and Toad (four nominations apiece)."

June 26, 2006

  • Deutsche Welle: A City Comes to Terms with a Physical Symbol of its Nazi Past

    Quote: "It's where thousands of Nazi followers gathered and Leni Riefenstahl filmed Triumph of the Will. Now the Nazi convention site by Nuremberg offers visitors a glimpse into the how's and why's of Germany's darkest period."

June 23, 2006

  • Guardian Unlimited: Why fascism is a glass house

    Quote: "In later years, [American architect Philip] Johnson expressed remorse, much like that other far-right cultural superstar Leni Riefenstahl (who — wouldn't you know it? — also lived in a glass house)."

June 16, 2006

  • NJ.com: Met pairs photos with Sontag quotes

    Quote: "Perhaps the nicest thing about this show is its Greatest Hits of Shutterbugging quality: Robert Capa's The Falling Soldier, taken during the Spanish Civil War in 1936, stands in for the 'critical moment' that only photos can catch; a Leni Riefenstahl print showing calisthenics at the Berlin Olympics in the same year exemplifies 'Fascist aesthetics,' but it also demonstrates the camera's uncanny talent for picking out vast patterns that last only for a fraction of a second. "

June 14, 2006

  • Expatica: British ambassador tells fans to forget Nazis

    Quote: "Nuremberg was the site of notorious Nazi mass rallies in the 1930s, enshrined in Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will, and many of the parade sites still exist."

June 13, 2006

  • Saturday Star: 'The Beautiful Game' meets Germany's ugly past

    Quote: "The 1936 Olympic Games incarnation, scene of African-American Jesse Owens' four gold medal-winning performances, was the backdrop for the fabled Olympia documentary produced by Leni Riefenstahl, an actress-turned-producer who filmed Nazi rallies in Berlin and Nuremberg."

June 8, 2006

  • Vue Weekly: Sterling Committee Nods to Stellar Roster of Nominees

    Quote: "Workshop West also has to be smiling, as they took home seven nominations — tied with Theatre Network and Shadow Theatre for second place — all for Mieko Ouchi's new work The Blue Light. In addition to getting a nomination for Outstanding Production, Ouchi herself will be up for Outstanding New Play, and Sandra M Nicholls got the nod for her powerful portrayal of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl."

June 7, 2006

  • Los Angeles Times: Reaching its goal — With the World Cup, Berlin's retooled Olympic Stadium moves beyond its Nazi past

    Quote: "The stadium was designed by architect Werner March for the 1936 Summer Games, its stripped-down limestone forms creating an appropriately severe backdrop for Leni Riefenstahl's documentary Olympia. At a cost of more than $250 million, the building has been restored and modernized for the World Cup, complete with a new glass and steel roof, by the Hamburg-based von Gerkan, Marg and Partners."

June 6, 2006

  • European Jewish Press: Dark history of World Cup venue

    Quote: "Photographer and film producer Leni Riefenstahl glorified German athletes and the stadium in her film Triumph of the Will. The notions of supremacy that emanated from Riefenstahl's film were considered the first effective propaganda tools that the National Socialist government used on its public to give it the feeling of true superiority."

May, 2006

May 31, 2006

  • Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle: Book by Leni Riefenstahl pulled from Saks' shelves

    Quote: "Following a call from The Chronicle, Saks Fifth Avenue Downtown recently stopped selling a 548-page photo book of the work of the late Leni Riefenstahl — a controversial filmmaker who glorified Hitler in a propaganda film in 1934."

May 30, 2006

  • Jerusalem Post: Cinefile

    Quote: "The Cannes Film Festival was conceived in the Thirties as an alternative to the Venice Film Festival. The Venice Film Festival had been taken over by Fascists, and mainly Italian and German films won prizes for several years. Anger on the part of judges from democracies came to a head in 1938 when Jean Renoir's anti-war classic, La Grande Illusion was overlooked for the top prize, which was then called the Coppa Mussolini (the Mussolini Cup). The winners that year were Leni Riefenstahl's two-part Olympia, a documentary about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and Luciano Serra, Pilota, made under the patronage of Mussolini's son. The first Cannes festival was scheduled to begin in 1939, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II, but was canceled and the show did not go on until 1946."

May 28, 2006

  • Blogcritics.org: Movie Review: The Lion King

    Quote: "In one particular scene, the Disney animators' use of Leni Riefenstahl's patented camera angles to capture the hyenas marching in lock-step under the singular review of Scar creates an abundance of subconscious images reminiscent of Hitler and the Third Reich."

May 22, 2006

  • Boston.com: A Nazi leader, in his own words

    Quote: "Hitler assumes power and then it's on to Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda classic Triumph of the Will (Goebbels calls her a lunatic) and the Berlin Olympics, followed by Kristallnacht and the German invasions of Poland and later the Soviet Union. Goebbels marketed all of it and frantically put the best light on impending defeat. Nothing happened in radio, print, film, overt propaganda, or theater without his approval."

May 20, 2006

  • Sunday Herald: Deutsch Courage

    Quote: "With arc lights blazing five miles up into the night sky, the Nazis created a luminous cathedral in which 100,000 could worship at the Fuhrer's feet or march — and march again, please — for retakes of Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film, The Triumph Of The Will."

May 19, 2006

  • Oregonian: Profile of Hitler's propaganda boss is fascinating, frustrating

    Quote: "Goebbels hated many of his fellow Nazi pioneers, especially SA head Ernst Rohm, SS head Heinrich Himmler and the operatic fop Hermann Goering. But on film he smiles and shakes hands with them. He despised Leni Riefenstahl and wrote that her preparations for filming Olympia were outlandish. But he is soon heard extolling its glories."

May 18, 2006

  • Jewish Exponent: Nazi Apologist Now a Gift Item

    Quote: "In the rather small home-and-gift department at Saks Fifth Avenue's Bala Cynwyd store, displayed along with other coffee-table books about exotic places around the world sits none other than the 25th-anniversary edition of Leni Riefenstahl's Africa."

  • Portland Mercury: Theatre

    Quote: "Fever Theater's new show [called Mitlaufer] presents an advertising agency known as the Pandemonium Institute, which pays for artists to live in a controlled environment where their behavior is monitored and outside influence is restricted. During the audience's introduction to the Pandemonium Institute, a manic and hilarious biography of Leni Riefenstahl is presented, with the inspired assistance of local band Iretsu. Riefenstahl, the innovative filmmaker who made the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, is identified as a good candidate for the Institute, which would have protected her talents from corrupting influences. This thought-provoking, entirely engaging production moves beyond pure spectacle into the realm of genuine experience."

May 17, 2006

  • Scoop: Kiran X and Danial Gorringe

    Quote: "Daniel Gorringe's work explores questions of the binary opposition of perfect with imperfect, and questions which is the evil twin. Gorringe uses found images from stills from Leni Riefenstahl's film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in which idealised and 'perfect' bodies are captured. Over these he draws ghosts of the bodies which are excluded by the tyranny of the perfect; the misshapen, misplaced other selves. The drawing, done by hand over such polished photographic images reminds us subtly that the frailties which make us human are often hidden, written and drawn in private diaries while the ideal front is kept in place for public contact."

May 15, 2006

  • New Yorker: Nazis Say the Darnedest Things

    Quote: "In 1940, Charlie Chaplin satirized Hitler in his film The Great Dictator. Infuriated, Hitler vowed to star in a comedy of his own in which he would make merciless fun of Chaplin. He hired Leni Riefenstahl to direct the film, which had the working title The Little Bastard. In his first script meeting with Riefenstahl, Hitler described the following comic bit: 'I'll be dressed in a tramp costume, just like Chaplin, and we'll do the scene in The Gold Rush where he cooks his shoe and eats it.' Riefenstahl looked confused. 'What's the twist?' she asked. Barely containing his giggles, Hitler said, 'This time, he'll choke on the shoelaces and die.' "

May 10, 2006

  • Willamette Week: Performance Listings for the week of Wednesday, May 10 2006 thru Tuesday, May 16 2006

    Quote: "While it's tempting to reveal the veiled conceit of Fever Theater's latest production, Mitlaufer, to do so would be to give away its most provocative and effective tool. Let's just say the play, publicized as a work exploring the life of Hitler's filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, is so much more than a docudrama. While the writing is somewhat oblique and some members of the collaborating band, Iretsu, could use some basic acting lessons, the work will leave any theatergoer with a lot to ponder about art, beauty, propaganda and their tangled relationship."

May 9, 2006

May 3, 2006

April, 2006

April 5, 2006

April 2, 2006

  • Guardian Unlimited: Back to the shiny new future

    Quote: "As the inclusion of Leni Riefenstahl's photography and Hitler's Volkswagen suggest, modernism provided a set of aesthetic principles that could be put to use by anyone."

March, 2006

March 30, 2006

March 29, 2006

  • Los Angeles CityBeat: The Radical Berkeley

    Quote: "[Busby] Berkeley began his career staging military parades in the army, later incorporating one in a number in Footlight Parade. In the 20-minute documentary (buz'be bur'kle) n. A Study in Style, included on the Gold Diggers of 1935 disc, John Landis and John Waters both mention the fascist aspect of Berkeley's style, with dehumanized individuals subsumed into lockstep crowds; Landis speaks convincingly of Berkeley's influence on Leni Riefenstahl."

March 28, 2006

  • Edmonton Sun: Fascinating tale of a dark genius — Riefenstahl drama does justice to her talent

    Quote: "Hitler called her, 'My perfect German woman.' Her works are still studied in film courses all over the world. Leni Riefenstahl stands as one of the great figures of ambiguity of the 20th century."

  • FrontPageMagazine.com: The New Anti-Semitism at Ramapo College

    Quote: "The simple truth is that [artist Deborah] Grant's image equates Jews with Nazis, as curator Isolde Brielmaier admits. Speaking in the post-modernese language of Grant's work, she says that it 'frequently engages in pop culture and politics, issues of race, neo-colonialism, oppression, violence against women, and the history of fascism.' Brielmaier also notes that artist Deborah Grant studied the style of Nazi film propagandist Leni Riefenstahl — a fact that reveals much about her intent in contrasting the Old Testament, the holy book of Jews, Muslims and Christians, with a New Testament of Nazism."

  • FrontPageMagazine.com: Spike-ing Racial Healing

    Quote: "In a weird coincidence, Inside Man co-stars the smarmy Jodie Foster, who will star as Nazi filmmaker and propagandist Leni Riefenstahl — and has defended her as 'libeled.' "

  • New York Times: New DVD's

    Quote: "There are striking similarities between Busby Berkeley's musicals of the 1930's and Leni Riefenstahl's notorious Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will."

  • Village Voice: Gold Digging: A Treasure Trove of Berkeley Classics

    Quote: "Genius of geometric pulchritude and maestro of the movie-land desiring machine, Busby Berkeley (1895-1976) was not just the reigning dance director of early-'30s Hollywood but America's most inventive sound filmmaker before Orson Welles — as well as our Leni Riefenstahl. (Mutatis mutandis, that is: As someone sang in one of the songs he choreographed, 'They have the goose step but we have the Suzy Q step!')"

March 22, 2006

  • Minivan News: Maldives Culture Editors Speak of their Struggle for Free Speech in the Darkest Days of Gayoom

    Quote: "In the West today, fascist ideology has been adapted by unethical public relations firms and advertising agencies. [Maldivian President] Gayyoom's alliance with the PR industry is as natural as Gayyoom's friendship with Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler's pet film-maker, the unrepentant Nazi, Leni Riefenstahl (now deceased)."

  • Vue Weekly: Vicious or Visionary? The Blue Light Falls on Hitler's Favourite Filmmaker

    Quote: "It was this combination of beautiful eye and odious mind that drew Edmonton playwright Mieko Ouchi to Riefenstahl over 15 years ago. This was long before Ouchi conceived of The Blue Light, a play about Riefenstahl; it was long before Ouchi (who later won a Canadian Authors Award for The Red Priest) even began writing plays. At the time, Ouchi was an aspiring filmmaker trying to find a female role model to look up to — and, having found Riefenstahl, trying to come to grips with a genius who's also a Nazi."

March 21, 2006

  • Scripps Howard: Boycott Beijing

    Quote: "[...] go rent Leni Riefenstahl's prize-winning documentary, Olympia. Released on Adolf Hitler's birthday in 1938, two years after the Berlin Olympics, the film shows the Games — and the Germans — in all their glory: the enormous main stadium, expanded to hold 110,000 spectators; the Olympic Village, boasting 100 buildings and 387 dining halls; the pageantry of the Olympische Jugend ('Olympic Youth'), who wowed audiences with their festive dances."

March 20, 2006

  • Guardian Unlimited: Action!

    Quote: "Leni Riefenstahl's camera moves fluently below and around its object of desire and by the end of Triumph of the Will you have seen Adolf Hitler from so many angles, in so many sensitive close-ups, that you feel you have shared in his nervousness, his exhaustion, his determination not to let down the crowd."

  • Time Magazine: 10 Questions for Jodie Foster

    Quote: "You're developing a film about the Nazi-glorifying filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Are you worried about the controversy?"

March 19, 2006

  • Edmonton Sun: Inside The Blue Light

    Quote: "Edmonton playwright Mieko Ouchi has chosen a compelling yet highly controversial subject in her latest work, The Blue Light. The play tackles the life and times of Leni Riefenstahl."

March 17, 2006

  • Daily Herald: 'V' for very provocative

    Quote: "A responsible viewer might feel queasy at the end, when the climactic ramp-up recalls nothing so much as Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi opus The Triumph of the Will."

March 9, 2006

  • Gay City News: Postured For Visual Pleasure

    Quote: "On the one hand, turning Parsifal's nation-state into a kind of übermensch skin-show makes explicit the queer connections between Sontag's political writings ('Fascinating Fascism') and her interest in aesthetics ('Notes on Camp'). But I wonder if the seductiveness of Jahnke's knights — the parade of male muscle — undermines Sontag's anti-war position. Isn't it all a bit too Leni Riefenstahl-esque?"

February, 2006

February 28, 2006

February 27, 2006

  • Enter Stage Right: The Dutch solution

    Quote: "Adolf Hitler understood the malleability of the conscience when he commissioned Leni Riefenstahl to make the euthanasia propaganda film I Accuse, which launched his 'compassionate' euthanasia program that eventually took out six million Jews, millions of Christians (3,000,000 Catholics, primarily, and other Christians in Poland alone), assorted mentally and physically handicapped persons, homosexuals, racial minorities, conscientious objectors..."

February 13, 2006

  • Age: A passion for the toughest stories

    Quote: "[Roger Graef] went one day to a screening of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, about the 1934 Nazi Party convention. 'It was stunning,' he says. 'In 1 hours that film turned me from a nice New York liberal into a Nazi.' "

  • Globe and Mail: A desire to manipulate the lens

    Quote: "[Mieko Ouchi's] new one, The Blue Light, about German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, is a bold, complex piece of theatre [...]"

  • Harvard Crimson: Fish, Planes, and Globalization

    Quote: "[...] 'propaganda' is a dreaded concept in art circles. The qualms spring from the historical association of non-fictional artistic expression and extreme ideologies. Just as the word 'genocide' has stronger social connotations than 'mass killing,' the term 'propaganda' instantly catapults us to the dark deeds of Nazi Information Minister Joseph Goebbels and the darling of the regime, Leni Riefenstahl, who shot the dubiously acclaimed Triumph of the Will."

February 12, 2006

  • Scotsman.com: The Scot who did a Jesse Owens — on ice

    Quote: "The most enduring image from the Nazi Olympics of 1936, courtesy of Leni Riefenstahl's iconic filmwork, is the triumph of black American athlete Jesse Owens, whose gold medal achievements made mockery of the host regime's racist ideology. "

February 8, 2006

  • Sign and Sight: In Today's Feuilletons

    Quote: "Michael Althen talks with actress Charlotte Rampling, president of this year's jury, who has a special connection to Berlin: her father, Godfrey Rampling, won the gold metal in the 400 Meter relay at the 1936 Olympics here. Documentary evidence can be found in Leni Riefenstahl's film Olympia. 'Today he's 98 years old and fragile but he still remembers. The first runner Frederick Wolff was sick, but ran nonetheless with his stomach flu and lagged pretty far behind. So my father, who had already been at L.A. In 1932 had to recover an entire field. He never ran that well again. But that victory was truly romantic and beautiful, as you can see in the Olympia film.' "

January, 2006

January 30, 2006

  • KanglaOnline: Beauty and Fascist Aesthetics

    Quote: "Adolf Hitler in his build-up to the 1936 Munich Olympics entrusted Leni Riefenstahl, then only 17, to make a film about Germany, a Germany Adolf wanted the world to know about. Leni was of course one Hitler's mistresses and had the full backing of the Fuhrer. She shot in Germany with 70 cameras and it culminated in two classics: Olympia and Triumph of the Will."

January 11 , 2006

  • Airdrie Echo: Alberta Theatre Projects

    Quote: "The Blue Light, by Mieko Ouchi — a story about Leni Riefenstahl fighting tooth and nail to hang on to her deeply controversial film."

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