Leni Riefenstahl is back with memories of Indonesia<\/p>\n
Kate Connolly, Guardian News Service, Berlin<\/p>\n
Leni Riefenstahl, the film-maker whose propaganda documentaries
\nturned Hitler into an icon, is attempting to rehabilitate herself
\nafter fifty years of vilification with the planned release later
\nthis year of a film to commemorate the centenary of her birth.<\/p>\n
The 45-minute documentary Underwater Impressions will make her
\nthe longest-working director in the history of the cinema. \"We've
\nfinished editing it ... it should have its premiere in time for
\nmy 100th birthday in August,\" she said at her lakeside chalet in
\nPocking, Bavaria.<\/p>\n
The news is likely to delight and enrage her fans and
\nadversaries in equal measure. Riefenstahl continues to be hailed
\nas a brilliant film-maker by some, dismissed as an evil Nazi
\npropagandist by others.<\/p>\n
In an interview in Monday's Die Welt she said she felt that
\nher name was finally about to be cleared. \"It has taken decades
\nfor the impressions to change and to get rid of most of the muck.
\nThat's simply because too much mud was slung.\"<\/p>\n
Underwater Impressions is a compilation of footage from more
\nthan 2,000 dives Riefenstahl has made off the coast of Indonesia
\nin the past 25 years. But according to newspaper reports,
\nselected critics who have seen it have hailed it an artistic
\ntriumph.<\/p>\n
One, Hilmar Hofmann, director of the Goethe Institute, who
\ninterviewed Riefenstahl for Die Welt, said: \"It exceeds even the
\ntalents of the veteran French underwater film-maker Jacques-Yves
\nCousteau.\"<\/p>\n
Riefenstahl, who is an embarrassment to all politically
\ncorrect Germans, and has refused to dissociate herself from her
\npast, is using the interest generated by the film to give her
\nversion of how the Nazis courted her.<\/p>\n
She painted a picture of herself in the interview as a naive
\nyoung woman who simply wanted to make films and approached
\nHitler, even before he came to power, out of curiosity. \"It was
\nwith great naivete that I sent a letter to (him) in Munich and
\nrequested a talk. I wanted to create my own impression of the
\ndifference between power and theater.\"<\/p>\n
Hitler was impressed by her self-confidence and showed
\nadmiration for the woman who had already proved she was capable
\nof making good films. He commissioned her to make documentaries
\nfor the Nazi party. She made three in four years.<\/p>\n
Victory of Power, in 1933, about that year's party conference,
\nwas considered a mediocre affair. But the subsequent Triumph of
\nthe Will, recording the 1934 party rally in Nuremberg and
\nOlympia, on the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, have been hailed as
\namong the best films of the century. Her last film, Tiefland, was
\nreleased in 1954.<\/p>\n
Riefenstahl, who began her working life as a dancer and
\nactress and was an accomplished skier and mountaineer, says she
\nwas never a member of the Nazi party, and had no idea of the
\nevils for which the Nazis were responsible.<\/p>\n
\"After the war I felt paralyzed when I knew what had happened
\nand saw things with a different viewpoint and everything seemed
\nterrible,\" she said. \"But we weren't informed beforehand about
\nHitler's concentration camps ... up till then we'd only seen his
\npositive side.\" Nevertheless, if she lived again, she said, she
\nwould change her political colors. \"I would be a social democrat,
\nbelieve me.\"<\/p>\n
Her arguments failed to convince many Germans then, as now,
\nand in the 50s she became a near recluse, taking up still
\nphotography and traveling to Africa, where she encountered the
\nNuba people and was taken by their beauty.<\/p>\n
She published books of her African photographs. She took up
\nthe Olympia theme again as a photographer at the Munich Olympics
\nin 1976. It was when she was in her 70s, and seeking therapy for
\nchronic back ache, that she took up diving, saying that the water
\nwas the only place where she felt free of pain.<\/p>\n
On a journey back to Sudan to visit the Nuba people two years
\nago, a helicopter crash almost claimed her life and brought her
\ndiving career to an end, although acquaintances say she remains
\nhealthy and lively.<\/p>\n
She has admitted being unhappy about a film of her life by the
\nactress and director Jodie Foster, due out next year, which seeks
\nto explore the way innocence can inspire evil. It has been
\nroundly criticized by much of Hollywood as a celebration of
\nfascism.<\/p>\n
Riefenstahl dismisses the claim that her pursuits of the past
\nhalf century have been attempts to escape the vilification she
\nfaced in Germany. \"Since my childhood I've always been drawn to
\nbeautiful things,\" she said. \"In my memoirs I wrote how as a
\nchild I pursued butterflies, flowers and romantic things ... I've
\nnever wanted to deal with horrible things -- they make me sad.\"<\/p>",
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