Longing For Innocence

From Stag Beetle to Swastika narrates in a richly detailed, associative montage the boundless possibilities of manipulating images and using images to seduce.

A 1941 Ministry of Information propaganda film set to the tune of The Lambeth Walk, a popular song from the musical Me and My Girl.

The perfect body as an object of cult worship. Based on the mass sports and body worship movement of the 1920s, the film propagates physical training and shows in stylized documentary scenes aspects of physical hygiene, gymnastics, sports and dancing as well as scenes in which supposed sportsmen of antiquity pose naked.

The armed forces of the Third Reich, particularly the German army, are presented as an efficient system of bodies and machines at the seventh Nazi Party Rally that occurred in Nuremberg in 1935.

A showcase of German chancellor and Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.

As sole female Junta is the only one who can climb a dangerous mountain, villagers deem her as a witch.

Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

Deep-sea diver/former propagandist Leni Riefenstahl explores the undersea world of coral reefs in various oceans around the world.

Dr. Johannes Krafft climbs a 12,000-foot mountain over and over again to search for his wife, who was lost on their honeymoon. Another couple makes the dangerous climb with him.

Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.

Hannes is employed at the Mont Blanc Observatory; the only outside connection is a pilot and Hella over the radio. Hella ascends the mountain but her father dies along the way.

In the mountains, Diotima meets Karl and fall in love and have an affair. Karl's friend Vigo mistakenly believes she's in love with him, causing rifts in all relationships.

An expedition goes in search of a party lost in the Arctic a year earlier.

In early 20th Century Europe, a dancer becomes the romantic bone of contention between two men, a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis.

The exploits of village girl Hannes and her attempts to master skiing and ski-jumping aided by the local expert.