vrijdag, september 12, 2003
Hundreds of mainly elderly people attended a memorial service on Friday for Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's official film-maker and last of Germany's famous Nazi-era figures, who died on Monday aged 101. Riefenstahl was admired and condemned for her documentaries that pioneered film techniques but glorified Nazism.
A painting of her stood by the coffin and music by Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, echoed around the hall where some 500 people gathered.
Riefenstahl won awards at the Venice and Paris film festivals in the 1930s for her "Triumph of the Will," a documentary highlighting the meticulously choreographed, eerie grandeur of the Nazi Party's 1934 Nuremberg Rally. She was then commissioned to make "Olympia," the official film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which recorded the grandeur of an event that Hitler hijacked to showcase National Socialism.
She delivered films that glorified the Nazis and remained a villain to many for failing to repent for that work up to her death near Hitler's residence "Eagle's Nest" in Obersalzberg, just weeks after her 101st birthday.
As late as 2002, she was investigated for denying the Holocaust. Bild newspaper called her the "devil's brilliant diva."
A painting of her stood by the coffin and music by Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, echoed around the hall where some 500 people gathered.
Riefenstahl won awards at the Venice and Paris film festivals in the 1930s for her "Triumph of the Will," a documentary highlighting the meticulously choreographed, eerie grandeur of the Nazi Party's 1934 Nuremberg Rally. She was then commissioned to make "Olympia," the official film of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which recorded the grandeur of an event that Hitler hijacked to showcase National Socialism.
She delivered films that glorified the Nazis and remained a villain to many for failing to repent for that work up to her death near Hitler's residence "Eagle's Nest" in Obersalzberg, just weeks after her 101st birthday.
As late as 2002, she was investigated for denying the Holocaust. Bild newspaper called her the "devil's brilliant diva."
# posted by Jan-Edward : 22:09
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