[LEN-E] Bach and Leni, Steven and Riefenstahl

[Luc Deneulin]

> "Steven has been extremely negative towards Riefenstahl...mmm"

>


  I read the book twice and made a lot of notes. S. Bach is a very  
good scholar imho. He did a good research and he prooved to know  
German very well - (which has been a major problem for other people  
writing about Leni Riefenstahl) so was able to consult many sources  
in German. It's a part of the truth

about her life and her films and her photography.- I think it's very  
interesting to read it in combination with Trimborn, Rother, Salked,  
Berg-Pan , Ford, Hinton etc. to have some kind of image about  
Riefenstahl's work that comes close to reality on certain points. And  
why not mine, to be published late this year, in Dutch to start with.

  It's not easy to find mistakes in his work, unless selectivity  
(knowingly or unknowingly) and over-interpretation, but these big  
errors can be seen in "extremely positive" books like David Hinton's  
as well, not to talk about Charles Ford's book, published in France  
in 1978 and translated in German in the early 80ies, remaining for  
almost twenty years the only account on Riefenstahl's life and films.  
(besides Riefenstahl's Memoiren which contains some major mistakes  
about both history and filmhistory) Both Ford and Hinton made on top  
of their selectivity and over interpretations  that lots of factual  
mistakes, by which they  - in the end - did more bad than good to the  
image of Riefenstahl.

Luc Deneulin, PhD
Filmstudies Free University of Brussels




> Bach, as we know, has been extremely negative toward Leni -- I have  

> no idea what Charlie Rose's perspective is on her (he's generally  

> very good at remaining "objective"), but it should be very  

> interesting to see how this interview goes!

>

>



Luc Deneulin
luc.deneulin at skynet.be