Leni Riefenstahl

One of the century's most remarkable and controversial women, Leni Riefenstahl is an artist of the first order. Dancer, actor, and photographer, she is best known as the director of Triumph of the Will, a film of a Nazi Party rally, and Olympia, the classic account of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It is for these works of cinematic propaganda that Leni Riefenstahl is both revered and reviled. In this autobiography, she finally discusses her motivations, her history, her important friendships, and, most of all, her art. Along with insights into directing and camera work - where she was an innovator on a par with Welles, Eisenstein, Griffith, and Hitchcock - Riefenstahl offers an emotional, powerful story of a woman who refuses to be defined by any terms other than her own.