Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl was born in Berlin in 1902. She was a ballet and modern dancer and painter before she became known as the blond, athletic star actress in Arnold Fanck's Bergfilms. Her debut, Das blaue Licht, appealed to Adolf Hitler and she was commissioned to film the NSDAP party meeting in Nurenberg in 1934. The result, Triumph des Willens, was the most powerful propaganda film ever made. It was followed by a masterpiece of rhythmic cutting: her film of the Olympic Games in 1936. Much later in her career she made anthropological films (e.g. in Africa) and was photographer for European magazines.