Leni
Riefenstahl was born August 22, 1902 in Berlin, Germany. She was a director and
producer of a popular 1930’s documentary film called the Triumph of Will. Riefenstahl started out her career as a ballet
dancer, however, upon receiving a knee injury, she stopped dancing and became
an actress. She started doing “mountain films” which is a German genre of film
that focuses on nature, mountains in particular. She soon formed her own
production company in 1931 and wrote, directed and starred in The Blue Light which came out in 1932.
This is when she gained support from the Nazi party and made the film Triumph of Will in 1935.
In Triumph of Will, the documentary studies the Nazi Party at a Nürnberg convention in 1934 that was to show the unification of the Nazi party, as well as introduce leaders. It also shows speeches given by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Because of the fact that her film supported the Nazi cause she ended up being detained after World War II. She tried to complete other productions afterwards but was never able to bounce back.
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Interesting read after seeing excerpts of the film in class.
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job providing background information on her that helped with the movie scenes we watched in class.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your blog and watching some of the film in class, it is interesting to see how ahead of her time she was in film production and how successful her films were.
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ReplyDeleteInteresting post about an interesting person.
ReplyDeleteAfter watching part of the film in class, I noticed how well Leni did at conveying her message to the audience. She used various techniques (that were very ahead of her time) to help persuade the audience to support the Nazi party without actually stating, "support the Nazi party".
ReplyDeleteNever heard of her before , i like the background information given - I actually learned something new about my country and its history!!
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