— ^,ossi.OR
favorite filmmaker, planned by Jodie
Foster's Egg Pictures, which is housed
on the studio's lot. Oscar-winner
Foster is hoping to produce and star in
the as-yet-unnamed movie, now being
scripted by Philadelphia scribe Ron
Nyswaner.
Nancy Kirkpatrick, Paramount's execu-
tive vice president of worldwide publici-
ty, and Tim Webber, manager of corpo-
rate publicity, informed the milers the
studio has nothing to do with the film.
"Paramount is renting space to Ms.
Foster, and she is doing her film here,
but ifs not a Paramount picture,"
Webber said.
The movie is already drawing criti-
cism from members of the Jewish
community, but Foster has insisted
that the German filmmaker needs to
be portrayed.
"Leni Riefenstahl's story is something
I have been dying to do for a long
time," she said in a written statement.
"I see it as the acting challenge of a life-
time. There is no other woman in the
20th century who has been so admired
and so vilified simultaneously. She was
perhaps one of the greatest filmmakers
of all time and yet her name and her
work will forever be linked to the hor-
ror of Nazi Germany."
Foster told the London Telegraph, as
reported in The Forward, that
Riefenstahl was "a tremendously gifted
woman" who "made a lot of ugly
choices at a terrible and horrible time
in history." She has said that she has
met with Riefenstahl and regards her
life as "a moral tale for us all. She is an
extraordinary woman, sharp as a tack
and as beautiful as she ever was, with a
tremendous body."
Now 98, Riefenstahl was born
Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl in-
Berlin and first aspired to become a
dancer. Switching to film, she starred
in and co-directed several exquisitely
shot German "mountain" films and
fell in with the Nazis.
She remains best known for her bril-
liant Third Reich propaganda films:
Her documentary Olympia, shot dur-
ing the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games,
earned her a spot on Time magazine's
cover and is considered one of the best
sports documentaries ever made.
Propaganda Minister Joseph
Goebbels himself awarded Riefenstahl
the German-National Film Prize for
Triumph of the Will, which depicts
Hitler as god-like and is widely credit-
ed for selling National Socialism to the
masses. Goebbels lauded Riefenstahl's
womanly charms in his diaries.
The filmmaker, who has insisted "I
was not a Nazi, I was an artist," was,
•
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Actress/director _Jodie Foster is planning
a film on Hitler's favorite filmmaker,
Leni Riefenstahl, pictured
(248) 737-$088
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according to the Knight-Ridder/Tribune
News Service, interned by the Allies for
three years after World War II but later
cleared of any wrongdoing.
While she never made any other
movies, she's published well-received
books of photography on undersea life
and Sudanese tribesmen in recent
decades. At the age of 97, she survived
a helicopter crash in the Sudan that
left her with broken ribs.
In an interview with the Sunday
Telegraph, as reported in The Forward,
Riefenstahl insists that she was naive
about Hitler, that she's "ashamed" she
didn't notice the persecution of the
Jews, and that she never wanted to
make Triumph of the Will.
"And I say [to Hitler], 'No, no, no,
no,"' she recounts. "And he says,
`Please, Leni, one film, one film of the
rally in Nuremberg.' And journalists
and people say that I have made the
film because I am ambitious."
Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center believes just that. He
cites the archival photographs he's seen
of Riefenstahl with Hitler: "She looks
infatuated with him," he asserts. "She's
basking in the glory and the attention."
Hier is concerned about Foster's per-
ceived admiration for the filmmaker.
"If you start on that basis, it's hard to
be truthful about her during the Hitler
years," he explains. "Anybody doing a
film on Leni Riefenstahl needs to show
that she was infatuated with the Fuhrer
and was his chief propagandist.
"To have assisted a person responsi-
ble for the greatest genocide in human
history and to have been at his arm is
not very complimentary." ❑
— Naomi Pfifferman,
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
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