Documentary filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl is
Documentary filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl is 99 years old and has a new film called Underwater Adventures about her lifelong scuba hobby coming out this summer just in time for her 100th birthday. She hasn’t made a film in nearly 50 years but her Triumph of the Will is one of the scariest yet most influential documentarys ever made. The young Riefenstahl was handpicked by Adolf Hitler to sculpt his cinematic image and she did it so powerfully that it got her vilified for decades afterwards. Riefenstahl didn’t exactly handle it well, claiming that politics had nothing to do with her creating the visual language of the Nazi party. Yeah right. Nonetheless, her achievement and her contribution to the art of cinema are undeniable.
There’s a pretty good documentary on her called The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, available and any fine local videostore.