[head]
Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl,” which challenges the carefully crafted public persona of one of Germany’s most controversial directors, is one of 17 German films playing in the various sections of the Venice Film Festival.
A deep dive into Leni Riefenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.
Veiel was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films, who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016.
“For me, it is the right festival for the film,” Veiel tells Variety. “The political situation in German and Italy is similar — with the rise of the right-wing, and a longing for propaganda and fake news. For a debate about the film,...
Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl,” which challenges the carefully crafted public persona of one of Germany’s most controversial directors, is one of 17 German films playing in the various sections of the Venice Film Festival.
A deep dive into Leni Riefenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.
Veiel was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films, who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016.
“For me, it is the right festival for the film,” Veiel tells Variety. “The political situation in German and Italy is similar — with the rise of the right-wing, and a longing for propaganda and fake news. For a debate about the film,...
- 9/1/2024
- by Nick Holdsworth
- Variety Film + TV
Andres Veiel’s documentary “Riefenstahl,” which challenges the carefully crafted public persona of one of Germany’s most controversial directors, who was forever tainted by working with the Nazis, is one of 17 German films playing in the various sections of the Venice Film Festival.
A deep dive into Leni Reifenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.
Veiel, who was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films – who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016 – is untroubled by the film’s out-of-competition berth as he believes the festival is the right venue for its first showing.
“For me, it is the right festival for the film,...
A deep dive into Leni Reifenstahl’s previously inaccessible archive, the 160-minute film lifts the lid on secrets the director of the 1935 Nuremberg propaganda film “Triumph of the Will” struggled more than half her life to keep hidden.
Veiel, who was brought onboard to direct by producer Sandra Maischberger of Berlin’s Vincent Films – who had gained unfettered access to Riefenstahl’s archive after the death of her longtime companion and husband Horst Kette in 2016 – is untroubled by the film’s out-of-competition berth as he believes the festival is the right venue for its first showing.
“For me, it is the right festival for the film,...
- 8/31/2024
- by Nick Holdsworth
- Variety Film + TV
Leni Riefenstahl, who died in 2003, aged 101, remains forever Google-able as “Hitler’s favorite director” for her daringly innovative documentaries The Triumph of the Will, about the Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1934, and Olympia, about the Berlin Olympics of 1936. Acclaimed and infamous in equal measures —was she a pioneering genius, a Nazi propagandist, or maybe both? — Riefenstahl remains a subject of fascination and debate over whether her talent can be separated from her political views.
What exactly those views were, what Riefenstahl knew about Hitler and the Holocaust and when she knew it, is key to this debate and the subject of countless books and documentaries. It’s the question at the center of Riefenstahl, the new documentary from German filmmaker Andres Veiel (Black Box Brd).
The documentary screens out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, the same festival where Leni Riefenstahl won a gold medal for The Triumph...
What exactly those views were, what Riefenstahl knew about Hitler and the Holocaust and when she knew it, is key to this debate and the subject of countless books and documentaries. It’s the question at the center of Riefenstahl, the new documentary from German filmmaker Andres Veiel (Black Box Brd).
The documentary screens out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, the same festival where Leni Riefenstahl won a gold medal for The Triumph...
- 8/29/2024
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Curiously, for a woman who directed a movie called Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl seemed to lose control over her own person when she first met Adolf Hitler.
“I had hot sweats,” the German filmmaker said of seeing the future Führer speak at a rally in 1932. “I was somehow captured, as by a magnetic force.”
Embedded in that description is a self-defense: She may as well have said, “I wasn’t to blame, I couldn’t help it, I was overwhelmed by Hitler’s presence, like millions of other Germans.”
The new documentary Riefenstahl, premiering Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, argues the German filmmaker carefully crafted a narrative absolving herself of responsibility for becoming Hitler’s favored cinematic propagandist.
“In a way, it is a detective story, because she is lying,” director Andres Veiel tells Deadline. “She’s manipulating.”
Leni Riefenstahl crouches beneath a camera.
After Germany’s defeat in World War II,...
“I had hot sweats,” the German filmmaker said of seeing the future Führer speak at a rally in 1932. “I was somehow captured, as by a magnetic force.”
Embedded in that description is a self-defense: She may as well have said, “I wasn’t to blame, I couldn’t help it, I was overwhelmed by Hitler’s presence, like millions of other Germans.”
The new documentary Riefenstahl, premiering Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, argues the German filmmaker carefully crafted a narrative absolving herself of responsibility for becoming Hitler’s favored cinematic propagandist.
“In a way, it is a detective story, because she is lying,” director Andres Veiel tells Deadline. “She’s manipulating.”
Leni Riefenstahl crouches beneath a camera.
After Germany’s defeat in World War II,...
- 8/28/2024
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Beta Cinema has added Andres Veiel’s upcoming documentary film “Riefenstahl,” about controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, to its Cannes lineup.
The film is an exploration of Riefenstahl’s legacy, delving deep into her complex relationship with the Nazi regime. With unprecedented access to Riefenstahl’s 700-box personal archive, the documentary navigates between her sanitized narrative and incriminating evidence regarding her knowledge of the regime’s atrocities.
Veiel is a multi-award-winning writer and director of both narrative feature films and documentaries. His documentary about the aftermath of the Raf campaign of terror, “Black Box Germany,” was honored with the German Film Award and the European Film Award in 2002. In 2011, he presented the feature film “If Not Us, Who?” in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, winning the Alfred Bauer Award. The film was also nominated for five German Film Awards and brought Sevilla’s best actor award to August Diehl for his leading performance.
The film is an exploration of Riefenstahl’s legacy, delving deep into her complex relationship with the Nazi regime. With unprecedented access to Riefenstahl’s 700-box personal archive, the documentary navigates between her sanitized narrative and incriminating evidence regarding her knowledge of the regime’s atrocities.
Veiel is a multi-award-winning writer and director of both narrative feature films and documentaries. His documentary about the aftermath of the Raf campaign of terror, “Black Box Germany,” was honored with the German Film Award and the European Film Award in 2002. In 2011, he presented the feature film “If Not Us, Who?” in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, winning the Alfred Bauer Award. The film was also nominated for five German Film Awards and brought Sevilla’s best actor award to August Diehl for his leading performance.
- 4/29/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
What Is It: Skin Inc’s Optimizer Voyage Tri-Light
Who Tried It: Maggie Malach, People Associate Editor, Digital Platforms
Level of Difficulty: 2/10 (seriously — my arm didn’t even get tired)
I’m forever in search of a product that will make my skin as glowy and as poreless as the Facetune app, except Irl. When I heard about Skin Inc’s Optimizer Voyage Tri-Light — which tackles the trifecta of soothing, brightening and improving the overall appearance of fine lines — I thought I’d finally found The One. If you need any further convincing, Jaime King and Jamie Chung — who consistently...
Who Tried It: Maggie Malach, People Associate Editor, Digital Platforms
Level of Difficulty: 2/10 (seriously — my arm didn’t even get tired)
I’m forever in search of a product that will make my skin as glowy and as poreless as the Facetune app, except Irl. When I heard about Skin Inc’s Optimizer Voyage Tri-Light — which tackles the trifecta of soothing, brightening and improving the overall appearance of fine lines — I thought I’d finally found The One. If you need any further convincing, Jaime King and Jamie Chung — who consistently...
- 11/22/2017
- by Maggie Malach
- PEOPLE.com
There's nothing more earnest than an English national epic, and this is a valiant expedition that becomes a low-key disaster. Told straight and clean, it's a primer on how to behave in the face of doom. Scott of the Antarctic Region B Blu-ray Studiocanal (UK) 1948 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 110 min. / Street Date June 6, 2016 / Available from Amazon UK £ 14.99 Starring John Mills, Derek Bond, Harold Warrender, James Robertson Justice, Kenneth More, Reginald Beckwith. Cinematography Osmond Borradaile, Jack Cardiff, Geoffrey Unsworth Editor Peter Tanner Original Music Vaughan Williams Written by Walter Meade, Ivor Montagu, Mary Hayley Bell Produced by Michael Balcon Directed by Charles Frend
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
English film companies fell on hard times during the postwar austerity period. But the relatively small Ealing Studios maintained its creative underdog brand even after it was taken over by Rank, and is still celebrated for wartime greats like Went the Day Well?, the singular masterpiece Dead of Night,...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
English film companies fell on hard times during the postwar austerity period. But the relatively small Ealing Studios maintained its creative underdog brand even after it was taken over by Rank, and is still celebrated for wartime greats like Went the Day Well?, the singular masterpiece Dead of Night,...
- 7/10/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The average person works out for two to three hours a week - but it's the 165 hours per week not spent at the gym that really matter when it comes to losing weight and being healthy. "It's what you do during that time that is far more important and far more impactful than anything you do in the gym," celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak explained during a talk presented by Ritual daily vitamins. Pasternak - who has trained Lady Gaga, Halle Berry, Megan Fox and Katy Perry - has developed a list of five behaviors to incorporate into your daily life...
- 6/28/2016
- by Gabrielle Olya, @GabyOlya
- PEOPLE.com
Continued from this article
Part I. Denazifying Leni
After World War II, Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t escape the Fuhrer’s shadow. Arrested first by American, then French troops, her property and money seized, she endured interrogations about her ties to the regime. Riefenstahl argued she’d been coerced into making propaganda and wasn’t aware of Nazi atrocities. The image stuck: three denazification tribunals acquitted her (one cautiously branding her a “fellow traveler”), and Riefenstahl began the road to rehabilitation.
More diligent investigators challenged her self-portrait. In 1946, American journalist Budd Schulberg interviewed Riefenstahl for the Saturday Evening Post. Riefenstahl claimed she didn’t know about Nazi concentration camps. Later, asked why she made Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl claimed Joseph Goebbels threatened her with a concentration camp. Disgusted with Riefenstahl’s self-serving contradictions, Schulberg labeled her a “Nazi Pin-Up Girl.”
Then the German tabloid Revue published a damning article in...
Part I. Denazifying Leni
After World War II, Leni Riefenstahl couldn’t escape the Fuhrer’s shadow. Arrested first by American, then French troops, her property and money seized, she endured interrogations about her ties to the regime. Riefenstahl argued she’d been coerced into making propaganda and wasn’t aware of Nazi atrocities. The image stuck: three denazification tribunals acquitted her (one cautiously branding her a “fellow traveler”), and Riefenstahl began the road to rehabilitation.
More diligent investigators challenged her self-portrait. In 1946, American journalist Budd Schulberg interviewed Riefenstahl for the Saturday Evening Post. Riefenstahl claimed she didn’t know about Nazi concentration camps. Later, asked why she made Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl claimed Joseph Goebbels threatened her with a concentration camp. Disgusted with Riefenstahl’s self-serving contradictions, Schulberg labeled her a “Nazi Pin-Up Girl.”
Then the German tabloid Revue published a damning article in...
- 7/18/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
Part I. A Filmmaker’s Apotheosis
April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical past through propaganda and art. Fittingly, Hitler celebrated at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Germany’s most prestigious cinema.
There, Nazi officials and foreign diplomats joined dignitaries of German kultur. Present were Wilhelm Furtwangler, conductor of Berlin’s Philharmonic Orchestra; Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and confidante; actor Gustaf Grundgens, transformed from Brechtian Bolshevik to director of Prussia’s State Theater; and movie star Emil Jannings, Oscar-winner of The Lost Command and The Blue Angel, now an Artist of the State. Also Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who nationalized German cinema in...
April 20th, 1938 marked Adolf Hitler’s 49th birthday. In the past five years, he’d rebuilt Germany from destitute anarchy into a burgeoning war machine, repudiated the Versailles Treaty and, that March, incorporated Austria into his Thousand-Year Reich. In Nazi Germany, fantasy co-mingled with ideology, expressing an obsession with Germany’s mythical past through propaganda and art. Fittingly, Hitler celebrated at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin, Germany’s most prestigious cinema.
There, Nazi officials and foreign diplomats joined dignitaries of German kultur. Present were Wilhelm Furtwangler, conductor of Berlin’s Philharmonic Orchestra; Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and confidante; actor Gustaf Grundgens, transformed from Brechtian Bolshevik to director of Prussia’s State Theater; and movie star Emil Jannings, Oscar-winner of The Lost Command and The Blue Angel, now an Artist of the State. Also Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who nationalized German cinema in...
- 7/8/2015
- by Christopher Saunders
- SoundOnSight
February 28, 2015
7:30 p.m.
Millennium Film Workshop
119 Ingraham St., Suite 126
Brooklyn, NY 11237
(Entrance on Porter St. at Johnson St.)
Jerry Tartaglia will be in person at the Millennium Film Workshop to screen selected work from his lengthy film career, including a special live performance of his expanded cinema project The Projectionist.
Tartaglia is a pioneer of Queer Identity cinema and this program will include some of his pioneering earlier work, such as Ecce Homo (1989), a meditation on watching queer sex; and 1969 (1991), a personal — and perhaps unreliable — remembrance.
Other films screening include a 16mm projection of The Mystery School, which is crafted from educational films; and A Short History of the Future, which reconstructs Das Blaue Licht (1933) by Leni Riefenstahl.
7:30 p.m.
Millennium Film Workshop
119 Ingraham St., Suite 126
Brooklyn, NY 11237
(Entrance on Porter St. at Johnson St.)
Jerry Tartaglia will be in person at the Millennium Film Workshop to screen selected work from his lengthy film career, including a special live performance of his expanded cinema project The Projectionist.
Tartaglia is a pioneer of Queer Identity cinema and this program will include some of his pioneering earlier work, such as Ecce Homo (1989), a meditation on watching queer sex; and 1969 (1991), a personal — and perhaps unreliable — remembrance.
Other films screening include a 16mm projection of The Mystery School, which is crafted from educational films; and A Short History of the Future, which reconstructs Das Blaue Licht (1933) by Leni Riefenstahl.
- 2/24/2015
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
"In space, no one can hear you scream." So ran the tagline for "Alien," which went into wide release 35 years ago this week (on June 22, 1979). Then again, we've been screaming loudly for the past three and a half decades, through several sequels, prequels, and other spinoffs.
Every movie fan knows that "Alien" launched the careers of director Ridley Scott (it was just his second feature) and star Sigourney Weaver (whose Ripley became the greatest action heroine in film history over the course of the franchise). Most even know that Swiss artist H.R. Giger (who passed away last month at 74) designed the "xenomorph," the alien that picks off Ripley's fellow crew members one by one. But you may not know what the alien's entrails were made of, what scenes were never filmed, or how the notorious "chestburster" sequence was made to look so horrifically realistic. Here are some of the secrets of "Alien,...
Every movie fan knows that "Alien" launched the careers of director Ridley Scott (it was just his second feature) and star Sigourney Weaver (whose Ripley became the greatest action heroine in film history over the course of the franchise). Most even know that Swiss artist H.R. Giger (who passed away last month at 74) designed the "xenomorph," the alien that picks off Ripley's fellow crew members one by one. But you may not know what the alien's entrails were made of, what scenes were never filmed, or how the notorious "chestburster" sequence was made to look so horrifically realistic. Here are some of the secrets of "Alien,...
- 6/20/2014
- by Gary Susman
- Moviefone
It is rarely highlighted what a strange habit and practice cinema-going is. Off we go to sit in a darkened room, usually with complete strangers, and watch something akin to a dream unfold before us. After all, Hollywood in particular, has been known as “The Dream Factory”. Why restrict it to Hollywood? Cinema = dreams. And as the subconscious plays havoc; dreams can turn into nightmares.
Audiences can laugh, cry and scream together. Each person maybe processing information in a variety of differing ways, yet, filmmakers employ a bag of tricks to invoke particular responses, at particular times.
Film experiences have a habit of becoming cherished, personal memories. It can achieve an ambiguous effect. Millions were astounded by Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, just as they were terrified by Jaws, seventeen years earlier. Alfred Hitchcock devised the infamous shower sequence in Psycho relying on suggestion, chocolate sauce, rapid editing and shrieking...
Audiences can laugh, cry and scream together. Each person maybe processing information in a variety of differing ways, yet, filmmakers employ a bag of tricks to invoke particular responses, at particular times.
Film experiences have a habit of becoming cherished, personal memories. It can achieve an ambiguous effect. Millions were astounded by Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, just as they were terrified by Jaws, seventeen years earlier. Alfred Hitchcock devised the infamous shower sequence in Psycho relying on suggestion, chocolate sauce, rapid editing and shrieking...
- 9/17/2009
- by Martyn Conterio
- FilmShaft.com
Leni Riefenstahl: 1902-2003
German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, who gained both fame and infamy as the director of the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will and other movies for the Third Reich, died Monday night at her home in Poecking, Germany; she was 101. An actress who turned to filmmaking, Riefenstahl was hand-picked by Adolf Hitler to direct a documentary of the Sixth Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg after he saw her 1932 film The Blue Light. The resulting 1934 film, Triumph of the Will, proclaimed Riefenstahl to be a masterful, innovative filmmaker, as did Olympia, her chronicle of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It was also her hypnotic, magisterial touch and breathtaking sense of beauty that branded both movies as the greatest propaganda films ever made, with critics saying her work glorified Hitler and showed him as a benign leader and savior of Germany. Though she received acclaim for her filmmaking genius, Riefenstahl would forever attempt to live down her association with the Third Reich, and struggled to make clear the distinctions between her aesthetic talents and the political affiliations that she documented in her work. In her defense, Riefenstahl said she had no idea of Hitler's "Final Solution" until after World War II and steadfastly maintained that Triumph of the Will contained "not one single anti-Semitic word." Despite the stigma that followed her (chronicled most effectively in the 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl), she resumed filmmaking in the 1960s and continued to work well into her later years; at the age of 100 released Impressions Under Water, a film showcasing her passion for underwater photography. --Prepared by IMDb staff...
- 9/9/2003
- WENN
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