For decades, filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl declared her innocence. She wasn’t a Nazi propagandist; she was simply an artist, there were no politics involved. Yet for decades, people have questioned her complicity with the Nazi regime, mainly due to her films, Triumph of the Will and Olympia which clearly served as propaganda – standing for the celebration of the superior and victorious. “It’s so clear. Of course she was a Nazi,” film director Andres Veiel told The AJN ahead of his new film, REIFENSTAHL, screening at the German Film Festival. “Whoever separates aesthetics from politics, for me, it’s a naive idea. It’s even a dangerous idea. Because they belong together, and Leni Reifenstahl is a living dead example that you can’t separate it.” REIFENSTAHL began when Leni’s partner Horst Kettner died in 2016 and access to Leni’s estate became available. There were 700 boxes to rifle through. It turns out this was likely Leni’s downfall. “She is perfect at manipulating, she’s perfect in fabricating stories regarding her own biography. So there was a lot of distrust in the beginning,” Veiel said. “And then step-by-step I learned she made a lot of mistakes regarding keeping stuff, which in a way, charges her.” Veiel is referring to hours of phone calls, private films and drafts of her memoirs which vastly differed from the published version. “the film is, in a way, a warning for what could happen, how easily we can be seduced into an ideology…” REIFENSTAHL the film shares a lot of new information about Leni, including the fact that the filmmaker herself admitted that after reading just the first few pages of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, she became an enthusiastic National Socialist. Veiel also explained that throughout the research process, it became very clear that despite Leni claiming that she wasn’t complicit in the massacre of Jews, not only was she present in Konskie, Poland but her set directions may have led to the massacre itself. Regarding the massacre, Veiel said in the years that followed, there was a shift in the way Leni spoke about it. “When you read her notes in the early years, she doesn’t deny being an eyewitness,” he said, explaining that there are letters found in the archives that detail her part. “Afterwards, suddenly, there’s a shift in her storytelling.” Veiel said this was likely because she was involved in a denazification trial, so she pretended to only learn about the Nazi atrocities after the war. “She was much more involved; she gave stage direction,” Veiel said. “She wanted to film the courageous German soldiers, not the Jews with dirty hands digging a grave. So she shouted ‘Jews off, Jews out of the image’. And then someone shouted it even louder, so the Jews panicked, tried to run away and then they were shot. She was something like a catalyst for the massacre; it enlarges her responsibility. This letter shifts the whole perspective on her. Yet even thirty, forty years after the war, she was not able to even regret a little bit of what happened, she just denied it, saying ‘I was just an artist, I was never interested in politics’.” Veiel said the film’s message – and proving that Leni was complicit in everything – has become even more important today, saying that he sees her aesthetic in the current imaging circulating and the attitudes of many around the world. “The deeper we went, the more we learned. It became a chance to look back because sometimes you think you’re in a safe space because it’s history, but from this perspective, we can even say that the film is, in a way, a warning for what could happen, how easily we can be seduced into an ideology that points to people and says ‘we are better because of birth, our country, our religion’.” Veiel explained that he sees a lot of the same aesthetics around current events, saying he saw Leni’s techniques in images of a parade in Moscow – “a low angle on Putin, his view from above of the marching columns” – and in footage from the Winter Olympics in Beijing as well. “I found a similar aesthetic to that of Olympia, it was the well-known imagery of the heroic and victorious – all of this is now incredibly topical.” All of this, according to Veiel, justifies the documentary being made. “In the gesture of submission to an imperial potentate, there is a hidden reward – to be part, as an individual, of an empire that is returned to historical greatness. It is the universal narrative of superiority and invincibility. At the heart of these images pulsates resentment: contempt for the other, the weak, the supposedly sick. And that brings us directly to the visual aesthetic of Leni Riefenstahl,” Veiel writes in the director’s notes. It’s for this reason Veiel believes the film is for the younger generation. “They have to deal with the challenges of a threatened democracy,” Veiel said. “It’s not a question of [giving her] attention. It’s a chance to create a close-up of a personality who had a strong affinity to fascism and to the ideology, and it’s a chance to learn something. If we deny it, we skip the chance to learn. That’s a crime of enlightenment.” Veiel pointed out that Leni was a human being who was very easily swayed by the propaganda of the Nazi regime, and then helped to create the propaganda for them. “If we just gave her a headline ‘Nazi, inhuman, ignorant, stupid’ we can push her far away from us, but the challenge is that we need to accept that it happens every day. Propaganda has a breeding ground … the question is why people follow the leaders.” “It’s a chance to create a close-up of a personality who had a strong affinity to fascism and to the ideology, and it’s a chance to learn something. If we deny it, we skip the chance to learn. That’s a crime of enlightenment…” When asked whether critics will say REIFENSTAHL the film is simply bringing attention to someone who doesn’t deserve the limelight, Veiel pointed out that you have to show it all, because it can happen again. In fact, it already is, with the rise of far-right groups and the propaganda machine rearing its ugly head all over social media. “You have to show her sophisticated abilities … she was a great editor … she was even a good director. But you also have to show the dark side of the aesthetics and the ideology. So when she says Olympia is not a political film, I counted it, I think it’s 26 times that Hitler is in the film. So Hitler is the hero,” he said. Veiel said the current environment means the film is absolutely necessary. “I hope that people who watch the film feel the necessity,” he said. “There’s something we have to fight for, there’s something we have to defend.” REIFENSTAHL is showing as part of the German Film Festival. For more information and to book tickets, visit germanfilmfestival.com.au