Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, producer, writer, editor, photographer and actress. She is considered one of the most controversial personalities in film history. On the one hand, she is regarded by many critics as an "innovative filmmaker and creative aesthete", while on the other hand she is criticized for her works in the service of propaganda during the Nazi era.
Ernst Udet was a German pilot during World War I and a Luftwaffe Colonel-General (Generaloberst) during World War II.
Georg Wilhelm Pabst was an Austrian film director and screenwriter. He started as an actor and theater director, before becoming one of the most influential German-language filmmakers during the Weimar Republic.
Olympia is a 1938 German documentary film written, directed and produced by Leni Riefenstahl, which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin during the Nazi period. The film was released in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil — Fest der Völker and Olympia 2. Teil — Fest der Schönheit. The 1936 Summer Olympics torch relay, as devised for the Games by the secretary general of the Organizing Committee, Dr. Carl Diem, is shown in the film.
Arnold Fanck was a German film director and pioneer of the mountain film genre. He is best known for the extraordinary alpine footage he captured in such films as The Holy Mountain (1926), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Storm over Mont Blanc (1930), The White Ecstasy (1931), and S.O.S. Eisberg (1933). Fanck was also instrumental in launching the careers of several filmmakers during the Weimar years in Germany, including Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker, and cinematographers Sepp Allgeier, Richard Angst, Hans Schneeberger, and Walter Riml.
A mountain film is a film genre that focuses on mountaineering and especially the battle of human against nature. In addition to mere adventure, the protagonists who return from the mountain come back changed, usually gaining wisdom and enlightenment.
Roderick Ross La Rocque was an American actor.
Uummannaq is a town in the Avannaata municipality, in central-western Greenland. With 1,407 inhabitants in 2020, it is the eighth-largest town in Greenland, and is home to the country's most northerly ferry terminal. Founded in 1763 as Omenak, the town is a hunting and fishing base, with a canning factory and a marble quarry. In 1932, the Universal Greenland-Filmexpedition with director Arnold Fanck released the film S.O.S. Eisberg near Uummannaq.
Paul Kohner was an Austrian-American talent agent and producer who managed the careers of many stars and others—like Ingrid Bergman, Maurice Chevalier, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, John Huston, Liv Ullmann and Billy Wilder—of the golden age of Hollywood, especially those who came from Europe before World War II. He was married to the Mexican-American actress, Lupita Tovar. His brother was Frederick Kohner, a novelist and screenwriter, his daughter was the actress Susan Kohner. His grandsons are the filmmakers Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz.
Gustav Diessl was an Austrian artist, and film and stage actor.
Impressionen unter Wasser is a documentary film released in 2002. It was directed by Leni Riefenstahl.
The White Hell of Pitz Palu is a 1929 German silent mountain film co-directed by Arnold Fanck and G. W. Pabst and starring Leni Riefenstahl, Gustav Diessl, Ernst Petersen, and World War I pilot Ernst Udet. Written by Fanck and Ladislaus Vajda, the film is about a man who loses his wife in an avalanche while climbing the Piz Palü mountain, and spends the next few years searching the mountain alone for her body. Four years later he meets a young couple who agree to accompany him on his next climb. The White Hell of Pitz Palu was filmed on location in the Bernina Range in Graubünden, Switzerland.
Hans Ertl was a German mountaineer and Nazi propagandist. He is most known for being the father of Monika Ertl, the Communist guerrilla who assassinated Roberto Quintanilla Pereira, the man responsible for chopping off Che Guevara's hands.
Walter Riml was an Austrian cameraman and actor.
The Blue Light is a black-and-white 1932 film directed by Leni Riefenstahl and written by Béla Balázs with uncredited scripting by Carl Mayer. In Riefenstahl's film version, the witch, Junta, played by Riefenstahl, is intended to be a sympathetic character. Filming took place in the Brenta Dolomites, in Ticino, Switzerland, and Sarntal, South Tirol.
German: Stürme über dem Mont Blanc is a 1930 German film written and directed by Arnold Fanck and starring Leni Riefenstahl, Sepp Rist and Ernst Udet. The film is part of the German film genre of "mountaineering", popularized by Fanck. The story revolves around a man who works alone at the Mont Blanc weather station gathering data. His only contact with the world below is via Morse code signals. He is joined by a woman friend, who helps him survive a terrible storm over the mountain. Ernst Udet is featured as a pilot who is involved in a dangerous mountain rescue.
North Pole, Ahoy is a 1934 German comedy film directed by Andrew Marton and starring Walter Riml, Guzzi Lantschner and Gibson Gowland.
Ernst Petersen was a German architect and actor. Although Petersen was very successful as an architect and several of his buildings are now listed as historical monuments, he achieved greater fame in the short period of time as an actor in mountain films alongside Leni Riefenstahl.
Fritz Loewe was a German polar explorer, glaciologist, geophysicist and meteorologist.
The German Greenland Expedition, also known as the Wegener Expedition, was an expedition to Greenland in 1930–1931. It was led by German scientist Alfred Wegener (1880–1930), who had previously taken part in two other ventures to Greenland. His purpose was to make a systematic study of the Greenland ice sheet.
