Reviews and notes
As actress, filmmaker and photographer, Leni Riefenstahl has become a legend in her time. Putting aside her past as director of politically charged but internationally acclaimed films such as 'Triumph of the Will', Riefenstahl turned to photography after World War II. In the early 1970s she lived among the Nuba in Sudan, and produced two influential books of still photography on them. This documentary records her return to these tribes thirty years later. For the then 98-year-old Riefenstahl and her film team, it was an undertaking filled with danger as they traveled to a war-ravaged area and survived both gunfire and the crash-landing of their helicopter. Juxtaposing footage of her first visits to the Nuba in the 1970s with the reality of today, the documentary also records the decline of a once proud people, as well as Riefenstahl's grief over the loss of many of her friends from the happiest period of her life.
Leni Riefenstahl died on September 8, 2003 at the age of 101.
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