Jodi Foster: has said that she will make the film 'even if there is a protest in America '

LENI RIEFENSTAHL, Hitler's favourite film-maker, has spoken out against Jodie Foster's plans to make a film of her life

SHE told The Telegraph: "Foster is trying to make a film not of my memoirs but of the other things in my life. I am afraid of [her saying] many things which will not be true." Miss Riefenstahl, 98, who at Hitler's request made Triumph of The Will, a record of the 1934 Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg, said: "I think Foster is a wonderful artist - one of the greatest."

She will not, however, give Foster the rights to her memoirs because, "in America it is not possible for an artist to protest if they [the film-makers] make something wrong. And you know my life, connected to Hitler and the past with the Third Reich, and all the rumours about my life, it's possible to make a horrible film. And I wouldn't be able to stop it."

Miss Riefenstahl, speaking at her home near Munich, in an exclusive interview which appears in today's Sunday Telegraph Magazine, said that several American film companies had wanted to make a film of her life before. "But always at the last moment advice is coming from Los Angeles, from the organisations there, from the Jewish organisations: no, not possible to make a film."

She said that Foster had told her that she would make the film "even if there is a protest in America - perhaps not for cinema, but in any case for video". In Hollywood, Foster's publicist, Pat Kingsley, commented: "If Jodie does the film - and there is a script being written - she's doing it without the involvement of Leni Riefenstahl. There may or may not be a movie. It depends on the material submitted to Jodie."

© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000.

 

 

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BELOW: Two highlights from the 1934 Nuremberg Party Rally, also filmed by Leni Riefenstahl. From Heinrich Himmler's private photo album (IRVING COLLECTION)