I am referring to two messages: >Date: Sat, 18 Jun 1994 13:02:24 EDT >From: Ed Haupt <[log in to unmask]> and >Date: Sat, 18 Jun 1994 15:13:15 PDT >From: Gene Stavis <[log in to unmask]> ------------------------------------------- Please allow me to have, as German, a special view on Mrs. Leni Riefenstahl. She started her career as an actrice in 1925, and she was without doubt influenced by her first important director Arnold Fanck. Under his in- fluence she directed her first film DAS BLAUE LICHT in 1931/32 - i.e. before Third Reich. Okay. Siefried Kracauer was the first who wrote that these films ("Berg- filme" = mountain films) anticipated, even helped preparing the esthetics and ideology of German fashism. Being very sceptic against all kind of German mythology I tend to agree with him. But this would be another chapter. What happened then with Madame Riefenstahl? Please remember some other filmmakers leaving Germany -- Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, Carl Mayer, Max Ophuels, Richard Oswald, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder among a lot of others. And what did Leni Riefenstahl do? She stayed. Okay, a lot of others stayed too. But she decided to make a career. And she made a career. She was one of the protagonists of Third Reich Nazi cinema, well seen by Hitler and Goebbels and all the other "leaders". In her documen- taries on the "Reichsparteitag" of the Nazis 1934 TRIUMPH DES WILLENS (Triumph of will) and in her documentaries on the '36 Olympic Games OLYMPIA she fully propagated the Nazi ideology. She was convinced. She was a part of the system. She was the official filmmaker of the Nazis. I am not speaking about the quality of her films. I am speaking about their ideological and political function. (Leni Riefenstahl was a ta- lented filmmaker. She made good films. This makes her whole case even more difficult.) And what happened after the Third Reich? Did Leni Riefenstahl regret, did she look at her own films with a certain distance? Nothing of this kind. She always said that she was "only an artist", that she "only did films". She went dozens of times to court against people who had the opinion that she was part of the system -- and she lost all liti- gation, all. She published an autobiography: more than one thousand pages full of lies. She felt herself as victim. (And what about the real victims?) I was surprised about the NY retrospective earlier this year. I wouldn't have done it. Or I would have prepared a lot of materials showing how her films made between 33 and 45 were transporting the Nazi propaganda. I think if you speak about her films, you shouldn't forget what role and function these films had in history. --- Klaus Klaus Eder Munich [log in to unmask]