CULTURAL CHRONICLE The genius of Germanic cinema #LeniRiefens | Forteresse Europe
CULTURAL CHRONICLE
The genius of Germanic cinema
#LeniRiefenstahl
Helene Riefenstahl, known as Leni Riefenstahl, born August 22, 1902 in Berlin and died September 8, 2003 in Pöcking, is a genius German director, photographer and actress, a talented filmmaker and photographer.
Leni Riefenstahl entered her career long before Hitler came to power, but it was only through her propaganda films in praise of National Socialism that she rose to fame.
In February 1932, Leni attended a rally of the National Socialist Party at the Sportpalast in Berlin. Fascinated by Hitler, who arouses so much enthusiasm in the crowd and worried about his own future, she writes him a letter to meet him.
The meeting took place a few months later, in May 1932, when the actress was due to travel to Greenland to film SOS Eisberg. They get along immediately.
On August 30, 1933, Hitler, who has since become Chancellor, honored Leni Riefenstahl to attend the premiere of the film with his Minister of Information Joseph Goebbels. Leni Riefenstahl walks into the room with a NS salute, which is fortunate enough to displease American producers.
It must be said that Leni Riefenstahl's career took a new turn when Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933.
With almost unlimited resources and a very large team, she produced The Triumph of Will over the 1934 Nuremberg Congress and then Olympia about the 1936 Olympic Games, which were enormous successes.
She thus renewed the 7th art by innovating on a technical level: images of dives with cameras that can go underwater, low-angle shots, slow motion, tracking shots, etc.
Until her death, Leni Riefenstahl repeatedly said that she was not a political activist but simply an artist. “I was never a National Socialist. I admired Hitler, that's all", she readily asserts, without fear of ambiguity. And to a journalist, in 1980, she launches: “Ugliness, misery, the pathological repugnant to me. Would you say that beauty is fascist? "
