Riefenstahl went on to star in many of Fanck ’ s mountain films as an athletic and adventurous young woman with a suggestive appeal ; she became an accomplished mountaineer during the winters of filming on mountains and learned filmmaking techniques.

Riefenstahl went on to make Nazi propaganda films and, post-war, subsequently lived in Africa where she continued film-making, but now of life in the African bush.

Fanck went on to produce the ski-chase White Ecstasy ( 1930 ) with Riefenstahl and legendary Austrian skier Hannes Schneider, then in turn served as Riefenstahl's editor on her 1932 film The Blue Light, which brought her to the attention of Adolf Hitler.

Riefenstahl was born on August 22, 1902.

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

At first, according to Riefenstahl ’ s memoir, she resisted and did not want to create further Nazi films ; instead, she wanted to direct a feature film based on Hitler ’ s favourite opera, Eugen d ' Albert's Tiefland.

Riefenstahl ’ s work on Olympia has been cited as a major influence in modern sports photography.

Olympia was very successful in Germany after it premiered for Hitler ’ s 49th birthday in 1938, and its international debut led Riefenstahl to embark on an American publicity tour in an attempt to secure commercial release.

Avery Brundage stated that it was " The greatest Olympic film ever made " and Riefenstahl left for Hollywood, where she was received by the German Consul Georg Gyssling, on 24 November.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 ).

The last time Riefenstahl saw Hitler was when she married Peter Jacob on March 21, 1944, shortly after she had introduced Jacob to Hitler in Kitzbühel, Austria.

Riefenstahl celebrated her 101st birthday on August 22, 2003 and married Horst Kettner.

Leni Riefenstahl died in her sleep on the late evening of September 8, 2003 at her home in Pöcking, Germany.

* Article on the relationship between Riefenstahl and Balazs

Since 1993, he has been Professor of German and Film Studies at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and has become particularly known for his influential scholarly work on Austrian author Alexander Lernet-Holenia, German filmmaker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, and on Austrian and Central European film.

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.

He was involved in gathering evidence against war criminals for the Nuremberg Trials, an assignment that included arresting documentary film maker Leni 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.

" Rammstein have also been controversial for their use of Nazi imagery, including footage shot by Leni Riefenstahl for Olympia in their video for " Stripped ".

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.

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.

Riefenstahl took dancing lessons and attended dance academies from an early age and began her career as a self-styled and well-known interpretive dancer, traveling around Europe and working with director Max Reinhardt in a show funded by Jewish producer Harry Sokal.

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.

SOS Iceberg was Riefenstahl ’ s only English-language film role as an actress.

* Leni Riefenstahl – dancer, actress, and film director

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

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

Riefenstahl received invitations to travel to Hollywood to create films, but she refused the offers in order to stay in Germany with a boyfriend.

Despite vowing not to make any more films about the Nazi Party, in 1935, Riefenstahl made the 18-minute Day of Freedom: Armed Forces about the German army.

From 1945 through 1948 she was held in sundry American and French-run detention camps and prisons along with house arrest but although Riefenstahl was tried four times by various postwar authorities, she was never convicted through denazification trials either for her alleged role as a propagandist or for the use of concentration camp inmates in her films.

Most of the negatives for Riefenstahl ’ s finished films and other production materials relating to her unfinished projects were lost towards the end of the war.

Riefenstahl tried many times ( 15 by her count ) to make films during the 1950s and 1960s but was met with resistance, public protests and sharp criticism.

Another of Riefenstahl ’ s films, 1938 ’ s Olympia, was meant to prove that the Reichstag was a democratic and open society under Nazi rule.

A notable element in the Pathescope catalogue was pre-war German mountain films by such directors as G. W. Pabst and Leni Riefenstahl.

Examples of this exist not only in posters but also in the films of Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein.

The most famous films were made by Leni Riefenstahl for the rallies between 1933 and 1935.

She closely examines staging, cinematography, acting, scenarios, and other cinematic elements in films by Pabst, Lubitsch, Lang ( her obvious favorite ), Riefenstahl, Harbou, and Murnau.