Riefenstahl took up photography, documenting a diverse array of subjects.

Riefenstahl gained a reputation on Berlin's dance circuit and she quickly moved into films.

Breaking from Fanck's style of setting realistic stories in fairytale mountain settings, Riefenstahl — working with leftist screen writers Béla Balázs and Carl Mayer — filmed Das Blaue Licht as a romantic, wholly mystical tale which she thought of as more fitting to the terrain.

Upon its 1938 re-release, the names of co-writer Béla Balázs and producer Harry Sokal, both Jewish, were removed from the credits ; some reports claim this was at Riefenstahl ’ s behest.

Riefenstahl agreed to direct the movie after returning from filming a movie in Greenland.

Closeup photographs of a distraught Riefenstahl survive from that day.

50 stills from the filming in Krün near Mittenwald were later found and from these, surviving prisoners were able to identify 29 camp inmates who worked for Riefenstahl and were then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the first weeks of March 1943 following Himmler ’ s December 1942 decree.

The German court found in favour of Gladitz, agreeing that Riefenstahl had known the extras were from a concentration camp, and they agreed with Riefenstahl on only one count ( finding that Riefenstahl had not informed the Gypsies that they would be sent to the Auschwitz camp after filming was completed ).

In 1960, Riefenstahl unsuccessfully attempted to prevent filmmaker Erwin Leiser from juxtaposing scenes from Triumph of the Will with footage from concentration camps in his film Mein Kampf.

In the 1960s, Riefenstahl became interested in Africa from Hemingway's book and from the photographs of George Rodger.

In her later years, Riefenstahl became known for her longevity and physical stamina, although she often suffered considerable pain from old injuries.

The event was filmed by Hitler's favorite director, Leni Riefenstahl, and branded with the giants of German industry: the lighting-mirrors were made by the Zeiss corporation, and the torches themselves, fueled with magnesium to prevent them from going out in bad weather, were constructed by Krupp, the huge steel and munitions conglomerate that armed Germany for both world wars.

On the other end of the focal length spectre, Leni Riefenstahl used extreme telephoto lenses to compress large crowds in Triumph of the Will while their allmighty Führer Adolf Hitler is seen through normal lenses and often from a low angle to appear tall in comparison.

Riefenstahl later removed his and Mayer's name from the credits because they were Jewish.

Lectures and workshops given by prominent artists have been a staple of the camp since its inception, with visits ranging from Leni Riefenstahl to Maury Yeston.

According to Ernst Hanfstaengl, who was a close friend of Hitler throughout the later 1920s and early 1930s, Riefenstahl tried to begin a relationship with Hitler early on but was turned down by him.

At age 72, Riefenstahl began pursuing underwater photography after lying about her age to gain certification for scuba diving ( she cut 20 years off her age ).

After the Nuremberg rallies trilogy and Olympia, Riefenstahl began work on the movie she had tried and failed to direct once before, Tiefland.

Helene Bertha Amalie " Leni " Riefenstahl (; August 22, 1902 – September 8, 2003 ) was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker.

Riefenstahl ’ s prominence in the Third Reich, along with her personal association with Adolf Hitler, destroyed her film career following Germany's defeat in World War II, after which she was arrested but released without any charges.

Although she directed only eight films, just two of which received significant coverage outside of Germany, Riefenstahl was widely known all her life.

In the 1970s, Riefenstahl published her still photography of the Nuba tribes in Sudan in several books such as The Last of the Nuba.

After her death, the Associated Press described Riefenstahl as an “ acclaimed pioneer of film and photographic techniques ”.

Riefenstahl produced and directed her own work called Das Blaue Licht ( 1932 ), co-written by Carl Mayer and Béla Balázs.

Instead, Riefenstahl met Luis Trenker who had starred in Fanck's films, who wrote to the director about her.

She co-wrote, directed and starred in the film and produced it under the banner of her own company, Leni Riefenstahl Productions.

Describing the experience in her memoir, Riefenstahl wrote: " I had an almost apocalyptic vision that I was never able to forget.

According to the Daily Express of April 24, 1934, Leni Riefenstahl had read Mein Kampf during the making of her film The Blue Light.

Impressed with Riefenstahl ’ s work, Hitler asked her to film the upcoming 1934 Party rally in Nuremberg, the sixth such rally.

However, Riefenstahl maintained that Goebbels was upset that she had rejected his advances and was jealous of her influence on Hitler, seeing her as an internal threat ; therefore, his diaries could not be trusted.

By later accounts, Goebbels thought highly of Riefenstahl ’ s filmmaking but was angered with what he saw as her overspending on the Nazi-provided filmmaking budgets.

During the Invasion of Poland, Riefenstahl was photographed in Poland wearing a military uniform and a pistol on her belt in the company of German soldiers ; she had gone to the site of the battle as a war correspondent.

According to her memoir, Riefenstahl tried to intervene but a furious German soldier held her at gunpoint and threatened to shoot her on the spot.

To the end of her life, despite overwhelming evidence that concentration camp occupants had been forced to work on the movie unpaid, Riefenstahl continued to maintain all the film extras survived and that she had met them after the war.

As Germany ’ s military collapsed in the spring of 1945 Riefenstahl left Berlin and was hitchhiking with a group of men, trying to reach her mother, when she was taken into custody by American troops.

Writer Budd Schulberg, assigned by the US Navy to the OSS for intelligence work while attached to John Ford ’ s documentary unit, was ordered to arrest Riefenstahl at her chalet in Kitzbühel, Austria, ostensibly to have her identify the faces of Nazi war criminals in German film footage captured by the Allied troops.

I'm not political .’” However, when Riefenstahl later claimed she had been forced to follow Goebbels ’ orders under threat of being sent to a concentration camp, Schulberg asked her why she should have been afraid if she did not know concentration camps existed.

Riefenstahl went on to have a prolific career as an actress in silent films.

The young interpretive dancer Leni Riefenstahl was mesmerized by Fanck's fifth feature, Mountain of Destiny ( 1924 ) and successfully pursued Fanck and his star Luis Trenker, convincing them to make her the star of The Holy Mountain.

* Leni Riefenstahl – dancer, actress, and film director

* Leni Riefenstahl ( 1902 – 2003 ), German filmmaker, photographer and dancer