Leni Riefenstahl was born in a working class suburb of Berlin in 1902. She started her artistic career as a dancer, but after suffering a knee injury she had to put an end to her dancing career.
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In 1924 on her way to a medical appointment she noticed a film poster for a "mountain film" directed by Arnold Fanck , Mountain of Destiny (Der Berg des Schicksals ). She sought the film out in a local cinema and was taken by the breathtaking beauty of the scenery and the artistic vision of Fanck.
Más tarde, ella misma llegó a protagonizar algunas de las más famosas películas alemanas de montañas, varias de ellas dirigidas por el mismísimo Arnold Fanck .
Later she would perform as an actress in some of the most famous German mountain films, several of them directed by Arnold Fanck himself.
Der Weisee Rausch (Borrachera Blanca) - 1.931
Duración original 75 minutos
En la gran pantalla, Leni Riefenstahl representaba el papel de una joven aventurera y deportista muy atractiva, y además esquiadora. Actuaba junto al actor principal de Arnold Fanck , Luis Trenker , y uno de los mejores esquiadores de todos los tiempos, el austriaco Hannes Schneider .
On the screen, Leni Riefenstahl presented herself as an athletic and adventurous young woman with a suggestive appeal, and also as a skier, acting together with Arnold Fanck ´s main male star, Luis Trenker , and with one of the most famous skiers of all times, Austrian Hannes Schneider .
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Her next step was to become film director. By then the Nazis were rising in Germany and Adolf Hitler recognized the potential of Leni Riefenstahl and asked her to film the 1934 National-Socialist Party rally in Nuremberg.
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The result was Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens ), a documentary generally recognized as a masterful, epic, innovative work of documentary filmmaking. However, it is widely regarded as one of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever produced and, although Leni Riefenstahl denied to have create pro-Nazi propaganda, her connection to Hitler and the Nazi party would haunt her to the rest of her life.
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In 1936 Riefenstahl qualified as an athlete to represent Germany in cross-country skiing for the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Olympics but didn´t participate. She would film the summer Olympics in Berlin instead, producing Olympia , a film widely noted for its technical and aesthetic achievements, with a major influence in modern sports photography.
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After World War II, she went to trial for her alleged cooperation with the Nazis, but wasn´t convicted.
Después se hizo fotógrafa. Sus trabajos más renombrados fueron con los Nuba , una tribu de Sudán con la que vivió durante varias épocas. También se especializó en fotografía submarina, para lo cual tuvo que mentir sobre su edad y decir que tenía 52 años cuando en realidad tenía 72.
She would then became a photographer. Her most renowned works were with the Nuba , a tribe from Sudan among whom she lived for various periods, and underwater photography, for which she had to lie about her age claiming she was 52 to get a certificate when she was already 72!
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After surviving a helicopter crash in Sudan in 2000, Leni Riefenstahl died in September 8 2003, a few weeks after her 101st birthday.
Fuentes:
http://www.leni-riefenstahl.de/
http://www.dasblauelicht.net/das_blaue_licht______________the.htm