Triumph of the Will and the power of propaganda

JAN 21 2018

A film-history account of Riefenstahl's 1935 record of the Nuremberg rally, and of how a party congress was built as a set for the camera rather than merely filmed. The essay is direct about what the spectacle carried: the racist and antisemitic programme of the party is naturalised by being staged as order, unity and devotion. It sets the film in the longer history of cinema used as a political instrument.