Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Reifenstahl was the icon for controversy and blind ambition during Hitler's glory days. She had the artistic eye and angle to make even the most deviant villains appear heroic. I really think Hitler knew this when he hired her to create one of the most famous of all propaganda documentaries, " A Triumph of Will." (or Willen) She used such a strong camera angle to make the people appear like insignificant, minute ants while Hitler appears 'larger than life.'

It must have been too tempting for her, a woman in a man's field of film and photography, to turn down an offer by a charismatic leader that seemed to be such a promise of hope at the beginning of his political career. With the odds stacked against all women in the arts and gorgeous looks that made her look like she shouldn't be working at all, she siezed the offer to create one of Germany's most inspiring and famous movies.

After the war, she was never able to work for pay again. She continued on with her own film documentaries, inspiring new innovations in photography and generally shocking the public with never-before-seen pictures of natives in remote islands without clothing, behaving naturally and uninhibited before the camera lens but she never could shake the brand she earned by associating herself with Nazi-Germany. What kind of person makes a choice that determines their fate for life?
Did she know these choices would determine her fate?