Leni Riefenstahl – Between Hitler and Hollywood | Free Documentary - History

Dec 8, 2023 | She is one of the most radical and controversial artists of the 20th century — Leni Riefenstahl. He is the inventor of the mountain film, camera designer, and film avant-gardist of the 20s—Arnold Fanck. In May 1932 both boarded a ship and departed on a five-month filmmaking voyage to Greenland. Their mission is the first ever German-American feature film production: ‘SOS Iceberg.’ It’s the hitherto riskiest and most expensive film project in history.

The spectacular and life-threatening filming process of ‘SOS Iceberg’ forms the frame of the film, which then deepens to the bottom of the passionate relationship between Fanck and Riefenstahl. While Fanck’s career crashes after ‘SOS Iceberg,’ Riefenstahl sets off with the Nazis taking over in 1933 – the coldly calculated rise at the expense of her mentor Fanck? The documentary shows excerpts from Fanck’s and Riefenstahl’s oeuvre, such as ‘The White Hell of Pitz Palu’ (1929) or ‘Storm over Mont Blanc' (1930). Reinhold Messner, Willy Bogner, and Fanck’s grandson, Matthias Fanck, talk about the pioneering innovations of Fanck’s mountain films.

The deconstruction of the myth surrounding Riefenstahl is also an overdue tribute to the almost forgotten film pioneer Arnold Fanck.