[LEN-E] LEN-E Digest, Vol 9, Issue 7

[Laura Welch]

 Dear Everyone: I still have the new Yahoo Group called Dreaming of Leni Riefenstahl.  It hasn't had any activity recently, but there was a great exchange and a new person joined in July.  It has gone quiet since then, but the person who joined had a friend of hers who was a personal friend of Ms. Riefenstahl.  It was pretty cool the discussion we had.  Except for a few of you here, most people on the old Yahoo Group just "lurked".  I hope some more people find the group that I made and join.  Then there can be lively discussion about her again on Yahoo.  If you want to go check it out, then go to this address : http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/lenidreaming/  I think the Yahoo Groups want things to remain lighter than the way things were carrying on with the old site.  They want people to stay on topic, or else they can get flagged.  I guess that's what happened with the old Leni Riefenstahl group.  I haven't had any problems with Yahoo doing anything to the new Leni 
Riefenstahl group that I set up.  Anyway, that's it from me, so have a great day !!!  Laura :)+--- On Wed 10/17, < len-e-request at riefenstahl.org > wrote:From: [mailto: len-e-request at riefenstahl.org]To: len-e at riefenstahl.orgDate: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 11:01:05 -0400Subject: LEN-E Digest, Vol 9, Issue 7Send LEN-E mailing list submissions tolen-e at riefenstahl.orgTo subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visithttp://four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/len-eor, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' tolen-e-request at riefenstahl.orgYou can reach the person managing the list atlen-e-owner at riefenstahl.orgWhen replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specificthan "Re: Contents of LEN-E digest..."Today's Topics:1. Re: Discouragement vs. Disillusionment (Nick Haysom)2. Re: Bach & Wege (Nick Haysom)3. Wege etc/ cfr Thomas & Ron (Luc Deneulin)----------------------------------------------------------------------Message: 1Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 
18:01:23 +0100From: "Nick Haysom" Subject: Re: [LEN-E] Discouragement vs. DisillusionmentTo: "LEN-E List" Message-ID: <00f501c81017$2d0e1910$0400000a at nhaysom>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"Hear hear!Naively I had thought that the Yahoo list had got deleted through the computer-equivalent of "clerical error". I'm involved with a few other Yahoo groups where strange things happen from time to time, tho' nothing quite this devastating. However, I realise of course now that likely as not someone "complained" to Yahoo and Yahoo ran scared at the thought that they might be hosting the rabid ramblings of a bunch of neo-Nazis. I think it deplorable that Yahoo made no investigations themselves into the nature of the list before removing it altho' I can understand their wish to head off the kind of contrived media storm which sadly the tabloid press seem to thrive on these days. Nick------------------------------Message: 2Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:03:02 +0100From: 
"Nick Haysom" Subject: Re: [LEN-E] Bach & WegeTo: "LEN-E Discussion List" Message-ID: <015d01c8101f$5f5efb70$0400000a at nhaysom>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"Thanks for that, Ron. Very interesting! The intertitles work perfectly (nice font) - in fact they look pretty authentic to me! As to "Who's that girl?" I'd agree: it *could* be her but I wouldn't bet money on it. I'd be more inclined to say it was Leni's stunt double...In fact, in the first sequence I actually thought the main dancer (on the right) was going to be the one who was claimed to be Leni. That said, if someone said to me (of the still) "That's Leni on the ground" I don't suppose I'd question it. The problem is, in part, that it is very easy to "see" what one expects to see: the brain always looks for familiar patterns it can latch onto. Once the brain is convinced about something it is very difficult to unconvince it. Without a signed affadavit to the contrary, Bach's version is as 
"true" as anyone else's.BTW I have to wonder whether Bach's judgement was based just on the facial similarity or did he use any other criteria? :)Nick------------------------------Message: 3Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:14:16 +0200From: Luc Deneulin Subject: [LEN-E] Wege etc/ cfr Thomas & RonTo: LEN-E Discussion List Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowedHiAs for Wege, with Riefenstahl in it or not, it's very difficult to use only visual material, there are eg photographs of Riefenstahl which are really her, but which could be - if you do not know it - be easily seen as photographs from a person who looks a bit like Riefenstahl.As for Thomas, I agree that Riefenstahl and The Third Reich can be considered finished for research. But:there have been numerous studies about Riefenstahl's filmic techniques, in PhD's, articles etc. In France her Olympia was compared to eg Tokyo Olympiad.When you name Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Vertov, these 
directors have written on film, had a film theory. Riefenstahl herself almost had none- my own research focused a lot on the influence of Belaz Balazs filmtheory which influenced, I think Das blaue Licht and Sieg des Glaubens, Balazs was eg very interested in Arnold Fanck's films and when Riefenstahl explained her story (well... hers...) of The blue Light, Balazs was very enthousiastic, since he saw a chance to put into practice his very interestin film theory (still available in German), he eg was more in favour of Fank films and quite negative - as a film theorician - about von Sternberg's Blue Angel. It took Riefenstahl almost 70 years to add Bela Balazs as co-director for Das blaue Licht (on her site)I have compared the winter Olympics from 1928 and 1936 with Olympia myself over 15 years ago.In France many research has been done on Cocteau/Riefenstahl, books and articles have been published, in French, Cocteau's partner and actor has been interviewed on this topic etc. 
Cocteau was not very interested in Riefenstahl's project, he saw some hom-erotics in Olympia and in Tiefland since he was in love with the actor who played Pedro.Scolars have made film analysis of Triumph, of Olympia.Tiefland is very difficult, as I'm studying this subject myself, - there have been at least 4 co-directors or assistant directors, all with their ideas, after the war they were not keen (due to the gypsy case) to ask credit-- so what was Riefenstahl's own input?What is Riefenstahl's filmic style? Her editing? The camera (or the choice of camera men?) More and more, unfortunately,-- I know some of her work since I'm 16 years old, I have almost completely changed my opinion, from Riefenstahl as a director with a very own vision on film which she applied on "her" films to Riefenstahl as a person who was rather very good at finding people who could work for her. In other words, in the beginning it looked as if Riefenstahl was a "auteur" as the French call it, but 
now... what exactly did she do as a director? You can see eg many photographs of her during the filming of the Olympics but these are not "snapshots", taken like that, many have been staged.It's all too easy to say Riefenstahl couldn't work after the war because of her nazi past while Veit Harlan made about 10 more films. Harlan could make very cheap films, he could have only 3 hours of filming and cut a movie out of it. It's not something Riefenstahl could do.This being said, great, very big directors like Flaherty (the father of the documentary tradition), Joris Ivens, Henri Storck have never had such attention as Riefenstahl.http://users.skynet.be/deneulin/books.htmlOn this site you can see how many works have been written on Riefenstahl and that's only a part, what I have studied myself. My aim is to gather more material and ad summaries of it., in the meantime I'm working on my book "Leni Riefenstahl's Films" which deals with a few topics Thomas wrote about, it must be 
ready within one year.In a way, indeed everything has been said about Leni's involvement with the Third Reich, and probably that's one of the reasons why the interest seems to fade, as Luc points out. BUT: to my knowledge noone has ever attempted to do much more than this. There are no books that try to place Leni in the context of filmmaking, no books that have researched in detail how her works and filmic techniques relate to other filmmakers of the time. I think especially of the Russians: Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin. We still don't know for sure HOW new (if at all) her filmic strategies were, what her very special and personal innovations were. We don't have a book that compares the style of "Olympia" to other sports films made before and after ( a comparison of the 1928 Fanck "Winter Olympiad" film, Leni's "Olympia" and Ichikawa's "Tokyo Olympiad", for example). Noone has investigated the stylistic similarities of "Tiefland" and Cocteau's films, nor her professional 
relations to Cocteau and the abandoned film project on Frederick and Voltaire which she wanted to do together with Cocteau. I guess one could find many other neglected topics for book-length studies of Leni's works. But everyone seems to be revolving endlessly around her involvement with Hitler and her politics instead, a topic which indeed begins to smell stale.Luc Deneulinluc.deneulin at skynet.be------------------------------_______________________________________________NOTE 1: PLEASE TRIM THE QUOTED PORTION(S) OF YOUR REPLIES!NOTE 2: BE SURE YOUR SUBJECT HEADING REFLECTS THE MESSAGETHAT YOU'RE REPLYING TO, NOT THE DIGEST!List Info: http://four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/len-e/Your List Options: http://four.pairlist.net/mailman/options/len-e/List Archives: http://four.pairlist.net/pipermail/len-e/To Unsubscribe: mailto:len-e-request at riefenstahl.org?subject=unsubscribeEnd of LEN-E Digest, Vol 9, Issue 7***********************************

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