The German film director Leni Riefenstahl (born 1902) achieved fame and notoriety for her propaganda film Triumph of the Will and her two part rendition of the 1936 Olympic Games, Olympia, both made for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

Leni Riefenstahl was one of the most controversial figures in the world of film. A talented and ambitious dancer, actress, and director, she had already made a name for herself in her native Germany and abroad when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. She admired him, as he did her, and with his friendship and support became the "movie-queen of Nazi Germany," a position she much enjoyed but could not live down after the fall of the Third Reich. In spite of her energetic attempts to continue as a filmmaker and her protestations that she had done nothing but be an unpolitical artist, she never managed to complete another film. Eventually she...