Flirting with Controversy

Spunky is what Leni Riefenstahl has always been. Right from the time that she defied her father and began to learn dance to her latest diving escapades at the age of 70 in the Indian Ocean.

And her "devil-may-care" attitude inevitably landed her in one controversy after another.

Unable to shake off Nazi associations

Probably the biggest controversy was her close association with the Nazi regime. This one surfaced after she made "Triumph of the Will", a powerful documentary of the 1934 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg.

That along with her 1938 film, "Olympia", a documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games made her a pariah, as the press had a field time calling her "Nazi pin-up girl", "Nazi sympathizer" and "Hitler’s girl".

Unfortunately, the Nazi scandal tainted her reputation so severely, that Leni Riefenstahl found herself blacklisted in the film world thereafter.

After the Second World War in 1945, Leni Riefenstahl faced Allied charges of producing Nazi propaganda films and of having close ties to Hitler and was even imprisoned. It was only after her interrogation, that the Americans officially "denazified" her and released her. But the damage had been done by then.

Storming male bastions

Unfortunately Leni Riefenstahl's Third Reich associations overshadowed the tremendous impact that her early well-crafted black and white films had on world cinema.

A woman in a man’s world of direction and film-making, Leni Riefenstahl pioneered and enhanced many of the sports photography techniques during the making of "Olympia" that we now take for granted: slow motion, underwater diving shots, panoramic aerial shots and tracking systems for following fast action.

In the words of Ray Müller, director of the documentary, "The Wonderful, horrible life of Leni Riefenstahl", "her talent was her tragedy".

The latest film

And yet Leni Riefenstahl remains invincible. After her last film, "Tiefland" was released in 1954, she has announced another one.

This time it’s a 45-minute movie, "Underwater Impressions". It’s a compilation of footage from the more than 2,000 scuba-dives she made in the Indian Ocean between 1947 and 2000.

"The film will have its premier in August exactly in time for my 100th birthday," Die Welt newspaper quoted Riefenstahl as saying.

Dancer

Born on August 22, 1902 in the Wedding district of Berlin, Leni took up dancing, much against her father’s wishes and was performing in Munich, Berlin and Prague by the age of 21.

She choreographed her own repertoire, chose her own costumes and make up. An unfortunate knee injury during a performance in Prague spelt the end of her dancing career.

Film actress

Her life took a dramatic turn as she waited one day for the subway train at Nollendorf Platz in Berlin. She happened to look at a fim poster, promoting the film with the prophetic name, "Mountain of Destiny" by Dr Arnol Fanck. Leni believed that was a sign.

She sought out Arnold Fanck, convinced him that she would appear in his next films and become a star. The rest is history.

Between 1926 and 1933, she appeared in five mountain films directed by Arnold Fanck. In a sense, they were a forerunner of the Indiana Jones films, in which Leni Riefenstahl always played the role of the beautiful, daring explorer against backdrops of craggy mountain peaks and magnificent landscapes.

Post World War One Germany loved the films as they provided a contrast to the dark, defeated, guilt-ridden German films of the time. Leni Riefenstahl achieved cult status by 1933.

Photographer

After her much talked-about forays into film-making and direction, Leni Riefenstahl at the age of 60 took on another profession -–that of a photographer.

Her love of nature and her fascination with different cultures and threatened life styles and life forms led her to remote Africa, to document disappearing African tribes.

Inspired by previous writers and photographer of the dark continent, she lived with the people of the Land of Nuba, a region in North East Africa. She learned their language and lived like one of their own.

What emerged were beautiful photographs of face and body painting, graceful African warriors with glistening ebony bodies, domestic life with children and cattle, rituals and ceremonies.

And as always, controversy followed her this time too, as some critics attempted to draw parallels between her images of the Nuba people and those of Nazi Germany. The photographs were exhibited all over the world.

Discovering the underwater world

But Leni Riefenstahl wasn’t content to rest on her laurels. At the age of 70, she learned diving!

She discovered the wonders of the underwater world during her first snorkelling expedition in the Indian Ocean. She has visited the exquisite coral gardens off the coast of Kenya, in the Red Sea, in the Caribbean, in the Maldives, in Indonesia, in Cocos Island in the Pacific...

Two beautifully illustrated books, "The Coral Gardens" and "Wonders under Water" resulted from these sub aqueous trips.

It makes one pant just trying to keep up with this woman who’s now headed towards her 100th birthday. And wonder, is there anything that she hasn’t done?