जीवनी

In an interview shortly before her death, she stated that if she had known that Triumph des Willens (1935) would have haunted her career, she would have never made it.

(August 22, 2003) Married for the 2nd time to her boyfriend of 35 years Horst Kettner on her 101st birthday and just 2 weeks before her death.

Robert Dassanowsky considers Tiefland (1954) to be Riefenstahl's cinematic statement on her rejection of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

When in 2000 Jodie Foster was planning a biographical drama on Riefenstahl, war-crime documentiers warned against a revisionist view that glorified the director. They stated that publicly Riefenstahl seemed "quite infatuated" with Hitler and was in fact the last surviving member of his "inner circle". Others go further, arguing that Riefenstahl's visions were essential to the success of the Holocaust.

Ms. Riefenstahl lied about her age in 1973 to be passed an official licence to go deep-diving in the Pacific Ocean. She started collecting images of the underwater beauty then, and she did not stop when a shark showed his appreciation of her by head-butting her 3 times, as documented on a TV documentary in 2002.

I filmed the truth as it was then. Nothing more.

[recalling at age 83 her 1936 film Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Völker (1938), which identified her with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party] "They killed me then. I am a ghost."

[In a 1993 interview, commenting on her work with the Nazi party] "Being sorry isn't nearly enough, but I can't tear myself apart or destroy myself. It's so terrible. I've suffered anyway for over half a century and it will never end, until I die. It's such an incredible burden, that to say 'sorry'... it's inadequate, it expresses too little."

I told Hitler that filming the party congress was too difficult for a girl. I told him the men are jealous and the problems I encountered affected my nerves. Hitler became very angry. He told Goebbels that when he gave an order, Goebbels was supposed to obey it. Hitler then told me that I must make a film of the congress in 1934 but I protested, saying that the same thing would happen. He... assured me that there would be no interference.

Really, if I start a work I forget food. I forget that I am a woman. I forget my dress, I only see my work. I forget because I am fascinated by my work.