Leni Riefenstal (1902-2003) - Aesthetics and Politics - and Constructing Identity

Like the architect Albert Spier, the film-maker Leni Riefenstal imagined she could engage in art without reference to politics. Both worked within the German Third Reich and one could argue further compromised appreciation of their work in friendships with Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels.

First I looked at her 'Olympia', an official record of the Berlin Games of 1936, with its extraordinarily innovative filming techniques ...


... and then I browsed some of the film's promotional stills, images that hark back to our imaginings of the first Olympics.


I could enjoy her use of slow motion to fully appreciate rapid action. And close-up to see detail of physical effort and athletes' emotion. New angles on action, such as the in-the-action view from trenches the film-maker had dug beside track and field events. And the close upshot for the diving:

But it was difficult to disassociate Riefenstal from the Nazi Regime, particularly in her earlier films, with titles such as 'Triumph of the Will' and its resonances with national socialist philosophy.

So I turned to the book of her (later) photographs of the Nuba tribe in Sudan (1975).

These are images which Susan Sontag has claimed still smack of 'fascist aesthetics'.






And I was about to proceed along this line but then I realized there was a more interesting approach to Riefenstal's work: considering how Africans viewed her vision of the Sudan. So I searched around and found the anthology 'Beautiful Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics' by African artists and scholars in the 'Thought Leader - Mail and Guardian Online'.

In his review of the book and with particular reference to a chapter on Riefenstal's photo essay of the Nuba, Yazeed Zamaldien considers the issues of the 'oppressive misrepresentation [of Africans] during the colonial period and its redefinition during post-colonial restructuring'. In particular, the conceptualizing of beauty and uglyness.

With respect to the colonial period, Zamaldien identifies the outsider mechanisms of exoticisation and grotesquing. Riefenstal's images now begin to take on another hue.






With respect to redefining notions of beauty and ugliness in post-colonial restructuring, Zamaldien speaks of attending a festival in the Nuba Mountains last year and being confronted by an other-than-colonial construction of its people. He continued, to say:

Eight Nuba tribes had gathered for the three-day festival and among them were Muslim, Christian and animist believers practising their collective cultural heritage alongside each other. It raised again the question of perceptions of Africa: who sees what and how.

The book does not seem to be providing solutions as much as raising the interesting and core issues to be addressed.

And to all these issues is added the complication of the internationalization of beauty and ugliness and identity, through, among other sources, the juggernaut of the fashion industry.

Here in Australia we have a related (pseudo?) problem - of imagining we have to develop a national identity. Such an identity would need to take account of all the feeds from indigenous Australia and Britain, and all the countries from which newer migrants originated.

But such identities tend to work against diversity. Diversity like being in the gay community. So difference within unity. A tough (but necessary) one!

The Photos I Didn't But Could've Taken of Paris

I traveled in Europe for four months in 2003, and rented an apartment in Paris for six weeks. But for various reasons took very few photographs of my all-time favorite city that trip.

Then yesterday, deep in cyber space, I saw the photographs I would've taken! Or did I actually take them and then I simply forget?!

But while I imagine they could/might be mine, they are 'foreign' too, more and less.






Seeing these photos has let me think about how I like my own to be.

More 'centred'. And in balance, according of course to my own eye. The central focus to be more obviously arresting. I want to be closer to whatever I am concentrating on. With more calculated framing. And the cut-off bits more obviously and consciously decided. Other choices of detail.






I've learned some new ways of approaching outdoor scenes. This next shot has a nice closed-in feeling - you have a sense of being cramped in between the walls and the cars, as you can do walking round medieval streets. I would've wanted it to be more opened out.


I'm really surprised how specific I've found my 'eye' to be, looking at someone else's snaps.

Or ... is this all just an opportunity to do some big nostalgia! And finally a chance to do my comprehensive if belated Paris post.

La Goulue and the CanCan at Le Moulin Rouge - Louise Weber (1866-1929)

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec - Poster for Le Moulin Rouge and La Goulue (1891)

YouTube is truly an amazing resource!

I was playing round with things like 'Le Moulin Rouge' and 'cancan' and up came three clips (from andrasmblack, arbrerouge7 and gazabo) about Louise Weber - the famed La Goulue. Each with footage of this famed identity in middle age, executing a few dance steps.

La Goulue c1910

Dubbed 'La Goulue' (The Glutton) for her habit of downing the drinks off tables as she danced past, Louise Weber was THE cancan dancer of Le Moulin Rouge, and the highest-paid performer of her day.


Perhaps Jewish and from L'Alsace, Louise Weber settled into the Paris suburb of Clichy, and began working in a laundry with her mother. Even at 16 she revealed her daring - borrowing clothes put in for cleaning to go to the dance halls at night.

There she met Auguste Renoir, who introduced her to nude modeling for artists and for photographers such as Achille Delmaet ...




... and from there she found her way into the dance clubs and halls of Montmartre.

Immortalized by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec ...

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec 'La Goulue arriving at Le Moulin Rouge' (1892)

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec 'La Goulue and Valentin' 1895


Henri Toulouse-Lautrec 'La Goulue'

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and la Goulue at Le Moulin de la Galette

... this vibrant, audacious and gutsy sensualist would high-kick the hats off male customers' heads with a toe during her routine, ...


... dance on the table tops, and flash a red heart embroidered on her under garments.

She formed a dance partnership at Le Moulin Rouge' with Jacques Renaudin (1843–1907), a wine merchant who danced under the name of Valentin le Désossé or Valentin the Boneless. Doing the 'chalut', an early version of the cancan.



This footage of La Goulue around 1910 is touching for a number of reasons.

Determined to capitalize on her considerable fame, she broke with Le Moulin Rouge in 1895 to set up her own dance hall ...

Barraca de La Goulue, la nº 10 de la Feria del Trono de 1895

... and when this venture failed, she traveled about fairgrounds as a belly dancer, with her own booth ...


... only to fail again, and end her days in alcoholic destitution. Hinted at in the clips by her being reduced to a caravan home and torn and mended garments.

It's impossible not to respond to her efforts re-capture some of the vitality and abandon of her Moulin Rouge days. There is still some of the delicious and vigorous fluidity and the rhythmic abandon, but in the gentler mode of old age. And still the beautiful placement of body, arms and legs.

Like in a creaky old melodrama, La Goulue was finally reduced to support herself selling peanuts, cigarettes and matches - unrecognized and on a street corner near the Moulin Rouge!

Annual Migration of Golden or Cow Nose Rays

Two metres across, the Golden or Cow Nose rays circularly migrate: western Florida and the Yucatan Peninsular, Mexico. In schools of up to 10,000.

These images were taken by Sandra Critelli, an amateur photographer.

Peggy Lee - 'When the World Was Young'

Everyone knows Peggy Lee for 'Fever' and 'Boy from Ipanema' and whatever.

But in 'When the World Was Young', Peggy seems at her very best - reflective, self-aware, alive, intensely expressive and 'in the moment'.

A song about the wisdom that looking back can bring.

A Flapper Wink

How often do you get a wink from a real 1920's flapper!

This experience has transcended time and space - courtesy of some footage of the period on YouTube from Aaron1912 ... and the vibrant personality of this archetypal flapper.

A larger portion of the clip reveals ...

... exactly what your grandmother might have really been doing in the second decade of last century!

Alla Nazimova (1879-1945) and 'Salome' (1923)

Born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon in 1879 in Yalt, the Crimea, Russia, Alla Nazimova played the central role in 'Salome' (1923), from which these stills are taken ....




... and of which the 'Veil Dance of Salome' clip below is part.

Having studied in the now famed Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater, Nazimova became a major star in Europe, before emigrating to the States where she was a huge hit on Broadway, and then a power in Hollywood from 1917 to 1922, as an actress, screenwriter and producer.

She had that great sense of creative purpose that drove Serge de Diaghilev in masterminding the Ballets Russes. And there is a parallel in the drawing together of so many important artistic elements, in the production of this daring film - from Natasha Rambova's designs from Aubrey Beardsley to the text of Oscar Wilde's play.

The acting and movement has a stylization and exaggeration that, while often typical of the period, is highly appropriate to this essentially aesthetic-movement-meets-German-expressionism material.

Great thanks must go to 'MaidMarian' for this upload to YouTube! Her choice of music is perfect - at times I imagine it as an original sound track!

Matthew Mitcham - Olympic Gold Medal Winning Diver and Proud Aussie Gay

I was browsing my Queerclique friend Kevin's page and, checking out his post on Matthew Mitcham, realized I couldn't resist doing something similar.

Matthew won a gold medal for diving at the Beijing Olympics.

Great to see a gay guy out, and out there doing so well!

Congratulations!!!

Nat King Cole - 'Nature Boy'

Think this is the best version of 'Nature Boy' - it's all paired back to essentials so the meanings of the lyrics are more potent, and the line of the music and voice more intelligible. The black and white footage, and sparsely orchestrated arrangement with few instruments. Nat King Cole looks amazingly fresh! And sounds so velvety.

I love the idea of understanding something of such great importance from an unexpected source - a wise mysterious enchanted younger person, 'a little shy and sad of eye'.

'The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return'

Haunting and thought-provoking.

Thanks Alan for reminding me of this great song!

POSTSCRIPT

Derek just commented he preferred John Leguizamo's version in 'Moulin Rouge', so I've posted it here too.