Riefenstahl

Vincent Productions
2024
Bildgestaltung / Grafikaninmation

115min
Director: Andres Veiel
Montage: Stephan Krumbiegel, Olaf Voigtländer, Alfredo Castro
Music: Freya Arde
Archive Productions: Monika Prischl, Mona El-Bira
Archive Research: Christiane Caemmerer
Producer: Sandra Maischberger
A Vincent Productions Film

AThis project provided the rare opportunity to personally handle (with gloved hands) nearly all the archive material that appeared in the film. This included 8mm, 16mm, and 35mm film reels, tens of thousands of photographs, and both handwritten and printed documents, spread across three state archives in Berlin.
This material not only served as a witness to a very dark period in history but had also been in the lifelong personal possession of one of the most controversial filmmakers in history, making this experience truly unique and occasionally unnerving.
Continuing the exploration of photographs as singular three-dimensional objects in their own right, as seen in previous works for the exhibition Unboxing Photographs and Light Surfaces, it was crucial to retain the haptic qualities—such as traces, markings, and residue—on both stills and film rolls. This approach aimed to emphasize that these were specific prints of films and photographs that had belonged to Reifenstahl, rather than sanitized versions from picture libraries. Filming off an analogue Steenbeck editing table we could slow down and analyse the film for itself and give the footage another dimension drawing attention to its own reality as a piece of film, before returning to the clean full screen version for when we wanted to quote the films directly, and focus again on the films images and content.

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