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Hitler filmmaker dies aged 101
BERLIN, Germany -- Photographer and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, best known for the Nazi propaganda films "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia," has died at the age of 101. Riefenstahl, who suffered cancer, died in her sleep at her home south of Munich on Monday night, her companion Horst Kettner told the online service for the German personality magazine Bunte. "Her heart simply stopped," The Associated Press quoted Kettner as saying. Riefenstahl celebrated her 100th birthday last year amid renewed criticism of her work for the Third Reich. Cologne-based organization Rom had accused her of using 120 Gypsies from concentration camps as extras in her film "Lowlands" between 1940 and 1942. It said she then failed to prevent them from being returned to the Nazi camp system, where many died. The group also accused Riefenstahl of Holocaust denial, a crime in Germany, for dismissing the allegations as nonsense in an interview printed in the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper in April 2002. The filmmaker later issued a statement saying her remarks on their survival had been a misunderstanding and that she regretted the Nazi persecution of Gypsies. She also defended her work by saying she was only filming what was happening in Germany at the time. She gained wide acclaim for "Triumph of the Will," a documentary on the 1934 Nuremberg rally, and "Olympia," a filmed record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Riefenstahl always denied political involvement with the Nazi party or any romantic link with German dictator Adolf Hitler who selected the dancer-turned-actress to be Nazi Germany's official filmmaker. But he gave her vast resources to make movies that idealized and glorified Nazism. Although she admitted "Triumph of the Will" was used to promote Nazi ideals, she said that was not her intention. "One can use it for propaganda, but ... it is no propaganda film. There is not one single anti-Semitic word in my film," she told The Associated Press. "In 1934 people were crazy and there was great enthusiasm for Hitler. We had to try and find that with our camera," she told CNN in a 1994 interview. Her biographer, Rainer Rother, said the filmmaker's view was simplistic though. "I think she might not have been an anti-Semitic woman, but she still was aware of what was going on." Brian Winston, a media scholar at the University of Westminster, agreed. "Riefenstahl represents a big lie and she's been lying for 50 years. She was extremely close to the regime and her only defense is that she wasn't a party member," he told CNN. Riefenstahl was acquitted twice by allied "denazification courts" after the war ended in 1945 but was jailed by French occupation authorities for helping the Nazi propaganda machine. Blacklisted as a filmmaker, she turned to still photography, although her work was boycotted by West German magazines. She was ostracized in Germany after World War II and spent an active later life protesting against condemnation of her Nazi links. In recent years she earned a partial rehabilitation and many newspapers gave extensive coverage to her 100th birthday. She rebuilt her reputation with photographs of Nuba tribesmen in southern Sudan and at the age of 72 took up diving, the subject of her last film released in 2001, "Underwater Impressions," a celebration of marine life mainly in the Indian Ocean. Copyright 2003 CNN. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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