orig. Berta Helene Amalie Riefenstahl
born Aug. 22, 1902, Berlin, Ger.
died Sept. 8, 2003, Pöcking
German film director and photographer.
In the 1920s she was a dancer and actress in German nature films. After forming a production company, she made and starred in the mystical The Blue Light (1932). For Adolf Hitler she directed the propaganda film Triumph of the Will (1935), a documentary glorifying the 1934 Nürnberg rally . She was praised for the technical brilliance of Olympia (1938), her documentary on the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Detained by Allied forces after World War II, she was eventually cleared of complicity in Nazi war crimes, but her film career never recovered, and she worked principally as a photographer thereafter.