Professor David Peimer
The Filmic Genius of Leni Riefenstahl: Art, Camera, Propaganda and Germany
Summary
Professor David Peimer explores what’s been called The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, which is the title of a German documentary made about her in the early 1990s. He looks primarily at Riefenstahl’s life, her use of art and documentary, and her role in helping Goebbels’s ministry of propaganda and specifically the film Triumph of the Will.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Well, I mean, what’s interesting is that when she was an American in the late ‘30s, pardon me, before the war, Henry Ford, Louis B. Mayer, Walt Disney, all these people are wanting her, desperate almost, for her to come and make a movie 'cause they see how effective she is, how good she is. So, I don’t know, and I did try to find out, but I think the true names have either been hidden or lost.
Monte, you hit the nail on the head. This is the debate, you know. Susan Sontag tries to grapple and so many, many others try to grapple. You know, this is clearly, she talks about it, you know, that she’s bringing artistry into newsreels as opposed to just the standard way of making newsreels at the time in, you know, the ‘20s into the early '30s, and the role of the artist vis-a-vis propaganda, vis-a-vis historical accuracy, and these fine lines I think amongst them all. One thing I think that cannot be disputed is one cannot be naive about the ideology of the people one is making the film for. And if you’re making the film and you know certain ideas and what they’re saying and believe in, you know you are aligning yourself there. You may not necessarily be having guns and killing and shooting, but you are trying to propagandise minds.