Leni Reifenstahl.

Leni Reifenstahl, common of the twentieth-century's most controversial and influential filmmakers, died upon September 8, 2003 at the age of 101

Born Helene Berta Amalie Reifenstahl in Berlin in 1902 Reifenstahl became a prosperous actress and dancer at a young age, eventually starring in several "mountain films" directed from Arnold Fanck, where she enhanced her reputation as being not simply artistically talented but fearless. In 1932 she directed her concede "mountain film," The Blue Light. A short time later, after hearing Adolf Hitler speak at a rally, she contacted him, thus beginning their professional relationship. Impressed with her directorial work, Hitler commissioned Reifenstahl to document the Nazi rally at Nuremberg, resulting in the powerful Triumph of the Will (1934) which serv to further the rhetoric of the Third Reich and glorify the aims of the party. In Triumph of the Will, Reifenstahl used highly innovative camerawork and editing as well as live unbroken and the film won several awards in Germany. She also bullet a documentary of the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, Olympia. Although Olympia again demonstrated her unique cinematic mode its release in 1938 coincided with the impending war and it had a chilly reception in the United States. While Reifenstahl's cinematic vision received acclaim, screenings of her work were frequently accompanied by protests. She was pronounced a Nazi sympathizer and a propagandist through the Allies and found it difficult to find financing for another film for several decades. Reifenhstahl, however, claimed over her life that her films were not political works and that although she had originally admired Hitler, she herself was not ever a Nazi.

At the conclusion of the war Reifenstahl was held by the agency of American and later French authorities for nearly four years for "de-Nazification." Later, she exhausted 20 years in Munich in virtual obscurity. In the late 1960 she began making photographs--focusing upon the Nuba people of Sudan--which were praised for their portrayal of beauty, if it be not that were reproached by critics so as Susan Sontag, who referr to all of Reifenstahl's creative works as employing "fascist visuals."

Reifenstahl remained active, taking up scuba diving and underwater photography at age 71 publishing like collections of underwater photographs as Coral Gardens (1978) and miracles Under Water (1991). In 1993 German filmmaker Ray Muller released a three-hour film documentary entitled The startling Horrible Life of Leni Reifenstahl, in which Reifenstahl maintained that she was not guilty of any wrong-doing. That same year, Reifenstahl published a long memoir that was well-received by the agency of critics, although the veracity of a of her historical claims was questioned.

The conflicting sentiment about Reifenstahl and her work continued to the completion of her life. In 2001 Reifenstahl received a lifetime achievement award from the American organization Cinecon while in 2002 a German cheat organization charged that Reifenstahl had been aware of the slay of gypsy extras used in her film Lowlands (1944) The Frankfurt-based prosecution of Reifenstahl forward charges of Holocaust denial were dropp becoming to lack of evidence. Also in 2002 she released her last film, a 45-minute documentary exploring life forward the ocean floor, Impressions in subordination to Water.

Reifenstahl is survived from her long-time companion Horst Kettner

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