Author Steven Bach discusses Leni Riefenstahl

April 24th, 2007

San Francsico State University Bookstore
Monday, April 30, 1:30-3:30 pm

Co-sponsored by the Friends of the J. Paul Leonard Library and the SFSU Cinema Department

Biographer and former United Artists executive Steven Bach now takes on his most challenging subject in Leni: The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl (Alfred A. Knopf). Bach provocatively clears away all the mythology surrounding the filmmaker whose Faustian pact with Adolf Hitler resulted in the infamous propaganda feature Triumph of the Will and Olympia. Bach teaches at Bennington College and Columbia University.

“Bach finally presents Leni Riefenstahl as she genuinely was — not as we have seen her so far — but as Hitler’s self-serving and mendacious p.r. handmaiden. If you haven’t thought of ‘Nazi artist’ as a noxious and corrupting oxymoron, Bach’s scrupulous account of a zealously masked life may persuade you otherwise.” — CYNTHIA OZICK

Entry Filed under: Events