Leni Riefenstahl is dead

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Oberst Mihael
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#16

Post by Oberst Mihael » 09 Sep 2003, 17:40

RIP :(

BLACK NIGHT
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Leni Riefenstahl

#17

Post by BLACK NIGHT » 09 Sep 2003, 17:42

Goodbeye Leni
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BLACK NIGHT
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Leni Riefenstahl

#18

Post by BLACK NIGHT » 09 Sep 2003, 17:43

Time to remember
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SS-Researcher
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#19

Post by SS-Researcher » 09 Sep 2003, 18:34

May she rest in peace...

BTW it is REALLY annoying to have a look at http://www.ebay.de

Do a search for "Riefenstahl" and you will stumble across various auctions with Leni Riefenstahl autographs which have been put online a few hours ago. She is not even dead for a day and there a lots of people trying to make their day selling her autographs (the thing that REALLY sets me up is the pricing of these new auctions...). :(

Best wishes
Florian

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Annelie
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#20

Post by Annelie » 09 Sep 2003, 19:56

Tom,

You wrote.......

" I still have a problem with people who were there then and can't cop to the atrocities or excesses of the regime (much less those who have promoted it). "

At the time Leni promoted as you say I believe that to her it was an opportunity to do her craft and for her day quite an unusual chance.
I have watched interviews with her also. I did not see what you saw.
I saw an person whom did go around and talk for the sake of making money.
There are and were many of those people around......opportunitistis and of
the vulgar kind. I did not hear her speak of atrocities and for that I respect
her since saying "sorry" somehow does not seem to resolve anything in that
situation. I didn't hear her glorify the regime or the excesses.

I just think this lady had class, stamina, survivor and great artist.. I cannot think of many people I know today of which could be said of that.
In her way she did the best she could and did not step people or use
her connection to further hereself like so many.

Annelie

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Beppo Schmidt
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#21

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 09 Sep 2003, 20:47

BERLIN (Sept. 9) - Leni Riefenstahl, whose hypnotic depiction of Hitler's Nuremberg rally, "Triumph of the Will,'' was renowned and despised as the best propaganda film ever made, has died, a German magazine reported Tuesday, quoting a long-time friend. She was 101.

Riefenstahl, whose health had been weakened by injuries sustained in accidents, died in her sleep at home Monday night, her companion, Horst Kettner told the on-line service for the German personality magazine Bunte.

``Her heart simply stopped,'' Kettner said.

A tireless innovator of film and photographic techniques, Riefenstahl's career centered on a quest for adventure and for portraying physical beauty.

Even as she turned 100 last year she was strapping on scuba gear to photograph sharks in turquoise waters, although she had begun to complain that injuries sustained in accidents over the years, including a helicopter crash in Sudan in 2000, had taken their toll and caused her constant pain.

Despite critical acclaim for her later photographs of the African Nuba people and of undersea flora and fauna, she spent more than half her life trying to live down the films she made for Hitler and for having admired the tyrant who devastated Europe and all but eliminated its Jews.

Even as late as 2002, Riefenstahl was investigated for Holocaust denial after she said she did not know that Gypsies taken from concentration camps to be used as extras in one of her wartime films later died in the camps. Authorities eventually dropped the case, saying her comments did not rise to a prosecutable level.

Speaking to The Associated Press just before her 100th birthday on Aug. 22, 2002, Riefenstahl dramatically said she has ``apologized for ever being born'' but that she should not be criticized for her masterful films.

``I don't know what I should apologize for,'' she said. ``I cannot apologize, for example, for having made the film ``Triumph of the Will'' - it won the top prize. All my films won prizes.''

Biographer Juergen Trimborn, who wrote ``Riefenstahl: A German Career,'' said Riefenstahl could not apologize because the Nazi films were the centerpieces of her career.

``One can't speak about Leni Riefenstahl without looking at her entire career in the Third Reich,'' Trimborn said. ``Her most important films were made during the Third Reich - 'Triumph of the Will,' 'Olympia,' - that's what's she's known for.''

Riefenstahl said she had always been guided by the search for beauty, whether it was found in her hypnotizing images of the 1934 Nuremberg rallies with thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and enraptured civilians fawning for their Fuehrer, in her dazzling portrayal of the 1936 Olympic athletes in Berlin, or in her still photographs of the sculpted Nuba men.

``I always see more of the good and the beautiful than the ugly and sick,'' Riefenstahl said. ``Through my optimism I naturally prefer and capture the beauty in life.''

Born Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl in Berlin on Aug. 22, 1902, she was the first child of Alfred Riefenstahl, the owner of a heating and ventilation firm, and his wife, Bertha Scherlach.

Riefenstahl's artistic career began as a creative dancer until a knee injury knee caused made her decide to shift her focus to movies.

After she saw one of Arnold Fanck's silent films set in the mountains, Riefenstahl presented herself to him as his new star, and he accepted, as much for her blue-eyed, high-cheekboned beauty as her daredevil spirit.

She rock climbed barefoot for the camera and was buried in an avalanche for the death scene in the 1926 film ``Mountain of Destiny.'' Soon, she was making her own films, fairy tales such as ``The Blue Light'' celebrating Germany's Alpine mystique in which she was star, screenwriter and director.

She heard Hitler speak for the first time at a 1932 rally and wrote to him - again, offering her talents to a powerful, inspirational man. In her memoirs, Riefenstahl rapturously describes her first impression of Hitler's charisma.

``It seemed as if the earth's surface were spreading out in front of me, like a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and shook the earth. I felt quite paralyzed.''

Although she said she knew nothing of Hitler's ``Final Solution'' and learned of concentration camps only after the war, Riefenstahl also said she openly confronted the Fuehrer about his anti-Semitism, one of many apparent contradictions in her claims of total ignorance of the Nazi mission.

Likewise, she defended ``Triumph of the Will'' as a documentary that contained ``not one single anti-Semitic word,'' while avoiding any talk about filming Nazi official Julius Streicher haranguing the crowd about ``racial purity'' laws.

Many suspected Riefenstahl of being Hitler's lover, which she also denied. Nonetheless, as his filmmaker Riefenstahl was the only woman to help shape the rise of the Third Reich.

She made four films for Hitler, the best known of which were ``Triumph of the Will'' and ``Olympia,'' a meditation on muscle and movement at the 1936 Berlin Olympic games.

She married once, in 1944 to army Major Peter Jacob, but the couple split three years later. She had no children, and her only sibling, Heinz, was killed on the eastern front during World War II.

Riefenstahl spent three years under allied arrest after the war, some of the time in a mental hospital. War tribunals ultimately cleared her of any wrongdoing but suspicion of being a Nazi collaborator stuck. She was boycotted as a film director and sank into poverty, living with her mother in a one-room apartment.

She reclaimed her career in the 1960s when she lived with and photographed the Nuba.

``I've never laughed so much as I did when living with the Nuba. I became reconciled with myself,'' she said.

She next turned to underwater photography, diving in the Maldives, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and off Papua New Guinea.

Around this time she met Kettner, or ``Horsti,'' as she called him, a fellow photographer half her age who became her live-in assistant and companion.

At age 100, she released a new film based on her dives, ``Impressions Under Water.''

She said she hoped she would be remembered by people as ``an industrious woman who has worked very hard her whole life and has received much acknowledgment.''

09/09/03 07:37 EDT

Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Exemplo ducemus
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#22

Post by Exemplo ducemus » 09 Sep 2003, 21:12

As they say in England, 101 is a good innings, however her cinematography was years ahead of her times whatever her politcal beliefs.

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Tom Houlihan
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#23

Post by Tom Houlihan » 09 Sep 2003, 21:40

Wiedersehn, Leni...

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EER
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#24

Post by EER » 09 Sep 2003, 21:51

I just saw a TV program about Leni a few weeks ago, and was very taken with her beauty and her beautiful work.

Mark V
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#25

Post by Mark V » 09 Sep 2003, 22:27

Every time we look movies, music videos, TV-programs and commercials we are looking the work of this woman. She developed the cutting as an means to make scenes lively and create emotions on spectator.

That is why her movies still today look good. They were way ahead anything done at that time.

R.I.P

Mark V

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#26

Post by feldmarschall » 10 Sep 2003, 02:53

wiedersehn mein frau und..........

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Andreas Schulz
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Leni

#27

Post by Andreas Schulz » 10 Sep 2003, 03:25

Fuck off, Feldmarschall, for your fucking words.
Hitler was a bastard and criminal.

AnDie

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Beppo Schmidt
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#28

Post by Beppo Schmidt » 10 Sep 2003, 03:27

Fuck off, Feldmarschall, for your fucking words.
Hitler was a bastard and criminal.


I may be mistaken, but I don't think Feldmarschall was being serious.

BLACK NIGHT
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Leni Riefenstahkl

#29

Post by BLACK NIGHT » 10 Sep 2003, 04:43

What ever you thinking of Hitler, Leni was a wonderful women. I`m proud to met her several times during my military time at Feldafing at the Starnberg lake in Pöcking. She didn`t akcept what the "Führer" did in every way, but she`s only done a good job, the best way she could do. She acceptet him as a great person, not al the things he had done. She don`t acceptet his antisemitismn and not his thought of so called "entartete Kunst" because she knowed many artists who were on the nazi`s black list . She was a great womwn living for the realty art, in dancing, acting and photografic. A profi in every way. The world lost a great human. Thats´s what I´m thinking for. Excuse my bad English, but it was a dark day for me.
Werner

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#30

Post by The Mighty Sisto » 10 Sep 2003, 05:15

It's too bad that Leni had to die. May she rest in peace.

*The Mighty Sisto*

Does anyone know where she's going to be buired? I'd love to visit her grave someday...

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