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Hitler's Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl Dies
2 hours, 32 minutes ago

By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer

BERLIN - Leni Riefenstahl, whose hypnotic depiction of Hitler's Nuremberg rally, "Triumph of the Will," was renowned and despised as the best propaganda film ever made, has died. She was 101.


Riefenstahl died Monday night at her home in the Bavarian lakeside town of Poecking, mayor Rainer Schnitzler said.


Riefenstahl's companion Horst Kettner said she died in her sleep.


"Her heart simply stopped," Kettner told the online version of the German celebrity magazine Bunte.


A tireless innovator of film and photographic techniques, Riefenstahl's career centered on a quest for adventure and portraying physical beauty.


Even as she turned 100 last year, she strapped on scuba gear to photograph sharks in turquoise waters. She had begun to complain recently that injuries sustained in accidents over the years, including a helicopter crash in Sudan in 2000, had taken their toll and caused her constant pain.


Despite critical acclaim for her later photographs of the African Nuba people and of undersea flora and fauna, she spent more than half her life trying to live down the films she made for Hitler and for having admired the tyrant who devastated Europe and all but eliminated its Jews.

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