Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (German: [ˈʁiːfn̩ʃtaːl]; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, producer, screenwriter, editor, photographer, actress and dancer.
Reality doesn't interest me.
I am fascinated by what is beautiful, strong, healthy, what is living. I seek harmony.
I am a great admirer of Robert Vavra and love his beautiful photographs and books. He is a wonderful artist, a poet.
I naturally prefer and capture the beauty in life.
Everywhere I went I experienced the same success, which transcends words.
They kept asking me over and over again whether I was having a romance with Hitler. Are you Hitler's girlfriend? I laughed and answered the same way each time: No, those are false rumours. I only made documentaries for him.
Where is my guilt? I can regret. I can regret that I made the party film, `Triumph of the Will,' in 1934. But I cannot regret that I lived in that time. No anti-Semitic word has ever crossed my lips. I was never anti-Semitic. I did not join the party. So where then is my guilt? You tell me. I have thrown no atomic bombs. I have never betrayed anyone. What am I guilty of?
I want to see, that's all. This is my life. I want to see
I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life.
The applause was so loud and insistent that I had to respond with several encores. I was numb with happiness, when it was over, I knew that this alone must be my life and my world.
I [seek] a style in the realm of legend. Something that might allow me to give free rein to my juvenile sense of romanticism and the beautiful image.
I was fascinated by the effects that could be achieved by editing. The cutting room became a magic workshop for me.
How awful for them [Hitler's victims] to see those swastikas, the SS men and the SA - people we'd never thought of as criminals.
I can simply say that I feel spontaneously attracted by everything that is beautiful. . . It comes from the unconscious and not from my knowledge. . . Whatever is purely realistic, slice of life, which is average, quotidian, doesn't interest me. . . I am fascinated by what is beautiful, strong, healthy, what is living. I seek harmony.