Theatre
Dance
Sound/Audio
Spoken Word
Leni Riefenstahl is a gifted artist who creates films for Hitler. This ultimately ruins her career, leading to her downfall.
See tickets below
Presented by: Jan Bolwell Handstand Productions
From: Te Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington
Known as 'Hitler's pin up girl', Leni Riefenstahl was one of the most innovative film makers of the twentieth century. She was a notorious figure throughout her long life (she died at 103), because of her association with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. As a young and talented artist Hitler gave Riefenstahl the opportunity to make films like Triumph of the Will, regarded as one of the greatest propaganda films of all time, and Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which revolutionised the way athletic movement is filmed. After World War II she was ostracised in Germany and never made another film until she was in her nineties. She reinvented herself as a superb photographer and had major success in this medium.
Supping with the Devil uses text, sound, music, movement and videography. It is a psychological study of a supreme artist who ‘sells her soul’ in the quest for power and fame. It is also the story of an artist who was blinded by the charisma of a fascist leader, something we are all too familiar with in the present world. There were 50 court cases taken against her throughout her life, and she won all of them. She was very skilled at tellling her story the way she wanted it to be heard and understood.
In our play we try to delve below the surface into her state of mind, the guilt, the defensiveness, because what many people cannot forgive about Riefenstahl is that she never admitted her culpability during the Third Reich years.
This is Jan Bolwell’s tenth play, many of which have toured successfully throughout New Zealand. She works with an experienced production team with director Annie Ruth, composer Jan Bolton and lighting consultant Helen Todd.
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