Re: Leni Riefenstahl

[Detlef Beyer <d.beyer@hermes.de>]

Hi Marc,

>of Goebbels and his cronies.  And, of course, she had a falling out with
>the Party leadership in '38, after which they would give her no work at all
>and discouraged others from doing so as well.  From 1940 on, her work was
>surpressed, for reasons never explained to her and for which no record
>survives, save for a couple of sarcastic notes in Goebbels' wartime diaries.
>

sounds that we are talking about a poor old lady who never did anything bad
but was a victim of her "time". There are other stories of people who were
surpressed by the Nazis and even if the things were changing for her in 39
(that the date she gives when people ask her about facism), she did what
she did before that!

> She simply made films at the direction of Goebbels and his cronies

Thats no "simple" work - it's an important part of Goebbels tools and, as I
wrote before, either she was to stupid to realize the reality or she simply
ignored the reality just to be successfull.

>She never made any public statement with regard to Hitler or Goebbels
>or the Party.

Are her films are no public statement?

>Second, you simply cannot attempt to judge the artist by their era or
>society or else we will condemn all art.  Is Eisenstadt any less a
>cinematographer for being a Communist Party member?  Is Picasso to be
>damned because he was an eyes-open fellow-traveller lending both his
>support and his genius to the Communists in the 1930's?  What about
>Leonardo and Michaelangelo, both of whom accepted commissions from the
>Catholic Church at the very time it was killing Jews in Spain, torturing

Show me works of Eisenstadt with the facist "quality" of Riefenstahls
works, show me something like that from Picasso or Leonardo... Maybe you
better consider Dali who supported Franko for a long time - but also not in
a way Riefenstahl did for the Nazis (I don't like what he did either).

(OffTopic:Also I think Eisenstadt had a different understanding of
"Communist" than you do. Maybe you should use "Stalinist" if you like to
compare with facism.)

Comparing is not allways leading to realy comparabel data and if somebody
is doing something wrong it's IMHO no excuse to tell about others doing
also bad things. For example the Leonardo/Chruch and Co dicussuion will
lead us to a complete new thread.

>Pray, do not be "shocked" by my expressions, as their are consistent with
>every statement of cultural belief I have ever posted to the LUG.  I hold a
>sincere belief that an artist can only honestly be judged on the integrity
>of his or her work and, to that end, applaud those who have commented on
>the quality of her work while I condemn those who wish to judge her for
>some alleged -- and factually non-existent -- endorsement of the Nazi regime.
>

And what are the parameters to judge about documentary movies or
photographs? What is the criteria for the World Press Award? The sharpness
of the images?

>and factually non-existent -- endorsement of the Nazi regime.

A joke?

Detlef

<LEICA IMAGES> http://www.hermes.de/chile/ </LEICA IMAGES>