Michael Pointon

Writer/broadcaster Michael Pointon presents a fascinating retrospective of the highly controversial German actress and filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl.

Despite being described as ‘an artist of supreme sensitivity’ by distinguished film historian Kevin Brownlow, her career will always be overshadowed by her association with the Nazi party and the contentious impact of her masterpieces, Triumph Of The Will and Olympiad.

Her visit to Hollywood in 1938 was boycotted by most of the Tinsel Town establishment except Walt Disney and when she was invited to speak at the National Film Theatre in 1960 the invitation was withdrawn ‘in the interests of public safety’.

Documentary pioneer John Grierson nevertheless defended her as ‘one of the greatest filmmakers in the world’.

Michael will screen extracts from some of Riefenstahl’s early ‘mountain’ films, when she became a star during the Weimar Republic, and show how her career developed into her being acclaimed as a leading film director and one of Hitler’s favourite movie personalities.

Sequences from Victory Of Faith, the documentary of the 1933 Nuremberg rally which Hitler invited her to make, will be shown together with footage of the more notorious Triumph Of The Will (1934) and Olympiad (1936). Extracts will also be included from Tiefland (1945) in which she allegedly used gypsies who were then returned to concentration camps.

Riefenstahl’s first major success as star and director, the talkie The Blue Light (1932), will be screened in the best available version.